Je ne sais quoi

Carla Bruni is simultaneously a singer, a songwriter, an ex-supermodel, the First Lady of France, and the former partner of numerous celebrity male suitors. You’d think that, in an enlightened age, the order of importance of these roles would be as written above, favouring her creativity over her looks and companions. But that would give the British media, and its readers, far too much credit.

Bruni’s third album, Comme Si De Rien N'etait (As if Nothing Happened), may appear little more than a Gallic twist on the innumerable acoustic minstrels who jostle for supremacy on the nation’s coffee tables but, hey, at least there is a twist.

The fact that much of the album is sung in French may be off-putting for some but it lends the songs a sense of exotic transcendence, a mystery they may otherwise have lacked. “L'avenir est trouble et le passé troublant / moi je suis à même du présent / comme la panthère
et comme l'éléphant” she sings on L’antilope. It looks great, sounds better, yet once translated into English (“the future is unclear / And the past is troublesome / Me, I'm at one with the present / Like the panther and the elephant”) it loses a certain, well, je ne sais quoi, shall we say. And rightfully so.

Music is clearly a strong passion for Bruni – her mother was a pianist, her father an opera writer – and this is something that comes across in her songs. Her wider appreciation for the arts is represented by some choice adaptations, including a poem by French author Michel Houellebecq, a transcription of a Lied by German composer Robert Schumann, the English-language You Belong to Me’ (made popular by Bob Dylan), and ‘Il Vecchio e Il Bambino’ by Italian anarchist Francesco Guccini. At the risk of sounding snobbish, one wouldn’t expect such a diverse bibliography on, say, a Vampire Weekend album.

Overall, a very respectable effort: more Norah Jones than Jack Johnson, which is, funnily enough, a compliment.