Camille - 'Le Fil' (Virgin France) Released 24/04/06

The Nouvelle Vague singer’s second solo album has made us do that thoroughly embarrassing thing of going all schoolgirl and gushing excitedly. We’ll spell it out for you: ‘Le Fil’ is a glorious album, and if you ditch it for being French, then you’re a moronic fool.

Gleeful and piercingly sweet, Camille’s often bleak lyrics play at odds with the African influenced rhythms. Putting our philosophy beard on for a moment, if ‘Le Fil’ (the thread) is her train of thought, it stays in one place for only a line or two before leaping somewhere else entirely. “I am at the age where you don’t sleep anywhere / the only beds where I dream are train platforms” she sings on ‘La Fille aux Cheveux Blancs’ (The Girl With The White Hair). “I’ve rented a wardrobe for my winter dresses / I killed relatives.”

That voice, so recognisable from Nouvelle Vague, sweeps along brokenly while a backing track of her popping her cheek and humming jitters uneasily along. This is fantastic pop, but skewed so far to the side of weird that it becomes something else. Just as Belleville Rendez-Vous can only loosely be classed as a cartoon , so can Camille only vaguely be umbrella’s by pop. What appears, isn’t what it is.

You don’t need to speak French to be lured in by these sounds, but half an hour with a dictionary lets you get to grips with her wicked rhymes. Singing about Voltaire and tutu-wearing hippopotami in the same breath, she’s like a beat boxing Regina Spektor, only without the childish feyness. She’s all the more beguiling for it. “All is mud on the ground” / said the hippopotamus in the tutu / “In bed, as in war, we are all hairy.” Poilus: hairy, also slang for French infantrymen in World War One. But you knew that already, right?

French homonyms aside, this is deliriously loopy wonderment. When Camille sets her voice against itself it’s like being drawn into a cocoon where nothing can ever go wrong, even on the most downbeat tracks. “Male so tender at the start of November / became deaf to love’s advances / but what evil caused me to be excited by him?” she asks on ‘Pâle Septembre’. Lyrically they read like mournful teenage poetry, but given the backing of bewitchingly over the top arrangements and Camille’s soaring voice, they become otherworldly.

‘Le Fil’ is a stunning album and we’re all grown-up enough to transcend the language barrier. Use your GCSE for the power of good and crank this baby high.