Buy here: Bandcamp Double Françoise
As moving as a Real Madrid rematch in the Champion’s League!
I’d be remiss if I went too far with the football metaphor, but that was my immediate feeling when, with my headphones on and walking past the Cité de la Musique, so dear to my heart, I listened to Tes Samedis (Your Saturdays) for the first time.
It was a chilly early morning. A shy sun was trying as best it could to make a little space for itself among the clouds, and it was certainly no coincidence that it suddenly began to flood the street when the first notes of this marvellous song, available here in two versions, rang out.
Whether it’s about the sky or the things of the heart, most great pop songs are often about the weather – and Tes Samedis is no exception.
The amazing Mauléon based duo Double Françoise, an alliance – it’s fitting to write it – of Maxence Jutel – musician, arranger and producer of the first rank – and his wife Elisabeth – a delicate émule of Françoise Hardy and Astrud Gilberto – combines his talent here with that of the eminent Popincourt – the perfectly
legitimate son of Paul Weller and Joe Jackson and responsible for a trio of high-flying albums in which nostalgia for what was and what will never be again always vies with the desire to fight back.
A marriage made in heaven, to put it simply – and it doesn’t matter that there are three of them.
Elastic bass and electric double bass conjure up an enchantment of Rhodes, Wurlitzer and Philicorda to support the perfect backing vocals and graceful, deliciously mischievous vocals evoking sweet memories of a rainy – but clearly exhilarating – Parisian Saturday.
It’s quite simple: the perfect pop song, if it exists at all, probably sounds like Tes Samedis.
To think that this exquisite song, which was ultimately left out of the programme for Popincourt’s enchanting third album, We Were Bound To Meet, was so close – cries of horror in the audience – to never seeing the light of day!
With beautiful artwork illuminated by delicate autumnal hues, this is a superlative record that speaks to the heart, the soul and even the legs.
Luminous, heady and romantic – everything pop music should always be – this record will undoubtedly help to shape a more beautiful world in which – rather than just being a sweet secret exchanged between insiders – it will certainly become, from Paris to Rio de Janeiro and from Greenland to Brisbane, an instant classic and número uno in your hearts – When Saturday Comes!
Mathieu David Blackbird, Paris – Mai 2024
(Persona)