Keeping my promise of writing more about Tori Amos, my Muse, here I am today with what is perhaps my favorite album of hers: from the choirgirl hotel, a 1998 release. I still vividly remember putting it for the first time on my CD player at close to maximum volume and let its many wonders enrapture me like very few have done since.

Musically, it was a quantum leap for Tori, what with her previous album - Boys for Pele - being an almost exclusively acoustic affair, complete with harpsichords and all. This time around, Tori decided to brew a very special kind of aural magic, lending her classical piano to the drum beat and the electronica sounds. The end result still sounds today as fresh as it came out and as adventurous. Her voice was also able to reach such emotional highs that it drove me to tears in the simple space of a chord change. I clearly remember feeling dizzy for days with the whole experience and this is something that has only happened to me once. What a gift, then. My humble thanks go over to you right now, Ms Amos.

Listen to Liquid Diamonds and let yourself go.

I know, I know, I'm always late to the game. But I've explained here before - I find it much more exciting to (re)discover these new artists just as their hype is going down and I'm therefore able to appreciate and enjoy them in a much more personal way.

I have to say that the title of this album is more than appropriate - Lungs - because this girl has some serious pipes to her credit. It's almost like she's channelling some sort of multitude of angry voices that come out of her throat all at once and the feeling throughout the album is one of exhilaration and urgency. The album is not without its faults, though, with some songs sounding much like each other and there is a variety of singing styles sorely lacking. But I guess all can be forgiven when the end result is as addicting as this.

I'm going to leave you with one of favorite tracks: Rabbit Heart (Raise it up). See you all soon.

Another proof on how to not fall prey to the dreaded sophomore album curse. Laura Marling says she speaks because she can and we believe her all the way. This, her next after her brilliant debut, proves once and for all that she is here to stay and furthermore that she has made an album for the ages.

It's quite incredible the songwriting maturity she displays in each and every song of this follow-up, with a noticeable improvement both on the lyrics and arrangements department. It's a self-assured artist we hear now and the pathos invested in some of the songs give it gravitas and resonance in a way seldom heard. And if you think I'm going loco with the superlatives, just pick up a copy of this album and give it a try. You'd be hard pressed not to concur with me.

Listen to Darkness Descends, a quite up-beat song albeit its misleading title.

It's been a long time since I've listened to this album and I always get a kick out of it. It's one of the most infectious retro-pop albums I've heard and it still manages to hit some high notes on the pop barometer.

Written and produced by Paradis' then beau Lenny Kravitz, this is a collection of songs that recall a whole period of time that's very much loved around these parts. Not quite recapturing the pop magnificence of the albums Gainsbourg made with Bardot and Birkin, it's still a nice try and quite a good entry in that particular musical cannon. Paradis sings it all the way through in that Lolita voice that she made all her own and it fits the festivities to a T. In short, I love it.

Listen to the hit single Be My Baby and fall in love all over again.

The french have somehow always managed to produce some of the most enduring and original pop albums that I can remember. I don't know how they do it. Guess they have it in their blood. And when on top of this, they channel their longstanding love of all things Americana, we have something like the album I have here for you today: Emily Loizeau's Pays Sauvage.

Sung both in french and in english, it's almost like hearing the songs a young french female pioneer composed when she first entered american shores and got in touch with "God's Country" very own soul and musical wavelengths. The feeling of the whole album is therefore very "live" and it sometimes feel like you've crashed a barn party and somehow instantly fell in love with it. The songs have a rhythm and a groove that completely permeates any room or space that you listen to. Yes, it's a winner on all fronts and I'm hooked.

Here's one of its more mellow moments: Songes [Dreams]. Take care.

I bet I'm not alone in saying that most of us didn't see this one coming. I mean, this smelled like a vanity project from the go: top model asks her rock star boyfriend to produce an album for her? I mean... How could they make this work and not be ridiculed? Amazingly, that's just what happened. And astoundingly, it's one of the year's best. Ladies and gentlemen, make way for a significant new artist has just walked into town.

Karen Elson is her name and she sings of things both ancient and timeless. She carries the weight of all female suffering with her and her soft and sometimes sandpaper-y voice casts spells on whomever makes an effort to really listen to her. She sings of lost loves, new loves, contradictory loves, timeless loves. And she cradles you while doing so. It's hard to imagine how effortlessly she does all this and how genuinely she does it. You just couldn't tell that by looking at her pretty pictures from her other day-job. What a pleasant surprise. And we want more, Ms Elson!

Listen to Lusana and gently fall in love with her.

I just love it when I "discover" new artists in an almost casual way. I've talked about this before, about my trust in serendipity. And it occasionally produces quite exquisite things like the one I have here for you today.

Morita Douji is japanese and made a string of solo albums in the 70's which were almost like reinterpretations on the same melancholic state of mind, one fueled by apparently a loss of a friend. And that is pretty much all I know about her. And that is pretty much all I need to know to immerse myself in the gloriously sad music she made in those albums. Oh, and she always wore dark glasses. Always. Even in concerts. And she quit her career very early on.

I particularly like her third album - A Boy - because I feel that she was able to convey and fulfill all her musical ambitions in a much more accomplished way than before. Listen to You Are Trembling, my favorite track of hers at the moment. Oh, and if you think that the non-musical coda is a glitch, well, it's not. It's completely intentional and for me it only adds up to the charm this female singer has on me.

I've been listening to this wonderful song for days on end now and I still haven't tired myself of it. It's another of those cases where you find something truly sublime amidst a soundtrack noone's ever heard of before. In this case it's Riz Ortolani's soundtrack for Prosperi and Jacopetti's Addio Zio Tom a.k.a. Goodbye Uncle Tom, a powerful indictment of racism and suppression of human values made by the "godfathers" of the Mondo movie, a kind of exploitative documentary exposing some of the grossest things human beings are capable of.

It's actually one of the most schocking movies ever made and sometimes the message it wants to convey isn't quite that well translated into images like their author's would've wanted them to be but it's there for all to see and judge. The music however is glorious and that's always been the main paradox with maestro Ortolani: no matter the amount of gore and blood on display, the melodies he creates are always grandly romantic which, I personally think, only helps to stress their power by way of contrasting them.

The song I have here for you today is called Oh My Love and is sung by Katyna Ranieri. And it's wonderful. Take a listen.

I'm not trying to provoke any cosmic backlash unto me but the fact is that today is Equinox and here I am talking about a record by Oberon called Midsummer Night's Dream.

I just found it by simple hazard (I prefer to call it serendipity) and fell in love with it. It's extremely rare (I think only 150 original copies were made!) and it features some of the loveliest folk sounds you'll likely to hear in quite some time. For seasoned folk lovers, maybe you won't find here nothing new but in my opinion, it has that one ingredient that separates it from most of what you've heard so far: magic.

I especially like the treatment they made to one of Debussy's classic pieces: Syrinx. I could hear it ad eternum and imagine myself daydreaming in a meadow somewhere. Maybe I just will.

One of the initial goals of this little blog was to kind of promote awareness to music that is often times underevaluated and unknown, while at the same time reevaluating that same music and getting the readers to listen to it with new ears. Today I bring to you something I'm quite sure only some of you have ever heard of. At least, I assume so.

Stevie Wonder's Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants began its very life as a soundtrack for a documentary of the same name which in turn was based on a book of the same name. Plus, it had the very ungrateful task of following one of Wonder's high watermarks - Songs In The Key Of Life, which many consider to be his masterpiece. So, a difficult album case study. However, not only does it succeed beautifully in following that almost miraculously produced album, it even surpasses it at times, which is no mean feat at all from whichever angle you see it. And for as hard as I try to explain it here with mere words, you simply have to listen to it to fully understand just how far he was pushing his production and songwriting skills at the time. Sometimes, it feels like an aural orgasm, especially if you listen to it with your headphones on.

For proof, try the gorgeous Come Back As A Flower. See you soon.

I admit to having a strange ritual choosing my aural selections: frequently, I choose them visually. Confused? Don't be. I explain: for me, album artwork is almost as important as the musical contents. I cannot take them apart and I often times feel disappointed when a great album jacket doesn't correspond musically or vice-versa. This one here today is not the case, thankfully.

Headless Heroes is a project by a very eclectic New York combo headlined by singer Alela Diane who decided to assemble a collection of songs of famous contemporary songwriters and do some covers. The Silence of Love is the final result and it is beguiling. Since I'm not that familiar with the original versions, it was almost like hearing them for the first time ever, not even registering the fact that they are in fact cover versions.

I'm going to leave you with To You, my current favorite track of this, an album I'm sure I'll give a lot of spins to.

I've fallen completely head over wheels over this canadian fille... A child prodigy and piano player since she was 3 years old, she started composing very early on and here it is, her debut album. And, as usual with me, I've just found out about it and now I'm raving about her to all my friends.

Sometimes, I really don't mind to discover artists this way, when they're about to release a new work (which must be her case any month now) and the promotion for the current album has dwindled and silenced. It's almost like finding out about a well-kept secret and being the last one to know. Wait - maybe that's not so good after all... Oh, heck, I really don't mind just as long as secrets are as sweet and enchanting as these.

I'm going to leave you with the album closer: C'était salement romantique. Stay safe.

The funny thing about listening to film soundtracks is that you are liable to find something exquisite laying there, just waiting to mesmerize you for days and weeks on end. Karl-Heinz Schäfer's Les Gants Blancs du Diable is one such case.

If you've never heard of french fille Leonie, you may consider yourself automatically forgiven: she is just being rediscovered thanks to the ever-surprising world of the blogosphere and is creating a small phenomenon. I must say I'm intrigued and would love to see an official compilation of her recordings released in the near future. Her voice is quirky, child-like and dreamy and these characteristics alone are enough for me to enjoy her without even wanting to know who she is. Which I won't. Oh, by the way, this following track would've fit like a glove in the compilation I posted about just below.

So, without further ado, here she is, singing Couleurs. Enjoy.

I'm crazy for a killer compilation. I make them myself to listen to while driving and always look for the rare and the interesting. And when compilations like these come your way, bringing together the cream of the crop of some of the most avant-garde musicians of France's 70's music scene, you know you cannot go wrong. And when you know that the guys behind such compilations are Dirty Sound Systems (of Dirty Edits Series fame), you know you're in for a win-win situation.

Dirty French Psychedelics is the name of today's compilation but they could've named it Escargots & Bistrots that it wouldn't change its massive appeal laying within. From the obscure to the less obscure (you won't find anything mainstream here, that's for sure), this amazing compilation takes you on an aural ride like very few I've listened to recently. Maybe it's my unabashed love for french retro kicking in, maybe it's the fact that I find the sound so recognizable in no small amount thanks to years and years of listening to bands like Air and singers like Gainsbourg, I don't know. What I do know is that this compilation is fast becoming a precious item in my aural library.

But let's hear some music. Here's Nino Ferrer's Looking For You. Which I am.

I've been meaning to write about this album for so long now that it's almost criminal it took me this long. And it's also criminal that this wonderful hommage to the wonderful yé-yé music that is so in vogue again these days has been so overlooked. Let's try and reassess that, shall we?

This isn't Emmanuelle Seigner's first foray into music but I think it's safe to say that this is her official debut as a force to be reckoned with in the current french musical scene. Practically all the tracks are killers and for me the best thing about it is that you feel as if you're listening to something very familiar even though none of the tracks are covers. And I personally couldn't ask for anything more.

I'm going to leave you with a delicious duet between Seigner and her husband, Mr. Roman Polanski himself. And if you happen to be reminded of another very famous french duet, don't feel bad about it. It's all good. Listen then to Qui êtes-vous?.

This being a blog about what music I'm currently listening to, I have to make a guilty confession: I've not been 100% truthful to my readers. I explain. I've been obsessing about Tori Amos musical career for almost 20 years now and I've just realized I've yet to write a post about her. So here it is. And I promise to write more posts on her in the future as penitance.

After the last two posts, it only seems fitting that the Amos album I choose to write first about is American Doll Posse, this one being about the many roles women play in the society, while at the same time using five alter egos (the titular Posse) to sing about what was going on in America at the time of its release. The result is a sprawling double-album of 23 tracks that manage to run the full gammit of piano-led ballads to schizophrenic rock extravaganzas. And schizophrenia is the key word here because Amos is able to encompass so many styles and music signatures in the songs contained in this album that sometimes you feel that you're listening to five different albums at the same time.

The end result is an album that pushes our perceptions of what female singer/songwriters should be all about: fearlessly provocative and endlessly talented in her case. I leave you with Big Wheel, the first single that had very limited airplay due to the inclusion of the acronym MILF in the bridge... Just goes to show how far behind we all still are...

How can you not love an american girl from California whose love of 60's french pop is such that she releases album after album of old yé-yé covers draped in gloriously retro album jackets? It's practically impossible, isn't it? Well, her name is Elinor Blake, more widely known as April March. Delicious, isn't it?

The song I bring you here today has made her famous by being featured in two movie soundtracks but there's definitely much more to discover from this evergreen chanteuse. Of curious note is the fact that she has worked as an animator in some pretty high profile projects, namely Pee-Wee's Playhouse and the opening credits and video for Madonna's Who's That Girl. Pretty good, huh?

But I'm going to leave you with the french version of Chick Habit, the Gainsbourg penned Laisse Tomber Les Filles, made famous by another very well-known chanteuse - France Gall. See you soon!

To me, it's endlessly amazing how incredibly frenetic and vivacious the Yé-yé scene was. I seem to be able to find a "new" singing girl every month. The amazing thing about that is that the level of quality of the songs is most of the times very high. Infectious pop in all its glory.

Today's fille is one Annie Philippe, which had a brief but nonetheless hit-filled career. She somehow managed to make her mark among much bigger names than her on a market that was over-populated with female singers with arguably better song material than her (yes, I'm talking about Claudine Longet, France Gall and even Zouzou). In fact, her voice register is highly reminiscent of one Ms. Gall and if you're fan of the latter, you're sure to instantly become very fond of the former.

Philippe was very fortunate, though to have one Paul Mauriat as the arranger of most of her songs and this is where most of her appeal lies, as I'm sure that there are plenty of his admirers out there. But enough chatting - listen to one of her greatest hits: C'est La Mode.

I love when musicians get all adventurous and grow tired of mainstream acceptance and go out and make the biggest follies that only the most unique minds are capable of. The funny thing is that this sometimes result in the biggest hits of their career. Welcome then to the new phase of Ms. Newsom's musical journey.

Losing her voice and rising up from the ashes with a triple-album (no less) is no mean feat. To anyone's standard, I'm sure. But that's just what Joanna Newsom did and she's receiving high praises from both the critics and (most importantly) the buying public. And although it's a daunting work when one begins to analyse it (and listen to it...), it becomes quite clear right from the start that this lady is special. And that she cooks with ingredients sagely brewed from the most mysterious sources.

It's quite a journey to listen to this album from beginning to end and some might want to take it in chunks. Or one record at a time. But it's in cases like these that I remember my muse Tori Amos' cunning words: "Listening to a record is like making love; if you can't endure listening to a long record, maybe you cannot make love for that long, either". Listen to Autumn. See you soon.

Autumn

Goldfrapp are seemingly incapable of making a bad record. Head First marks the fifth time they put out an album that is instantly catchy, addictive and barrier-pushing. What are they on and please can we have it, too?

This time around, they're back in time some 20 odd years and it's synth pop and breathy vocals all the way. 80's galore in full-on mode. And amazingly, it works. I have to confess not being particularly fond of that decade, so it's a bit of a surprise when I find that Head First has become my favorite pop record from the 80's, except that it was recorded last year!

Plus, it has the correct total number of tracks - 9, which is all one can take of hearing synthesizers going bonkers and Casio-like beats. The influences are all there to be seen and they do not try to hide them (thankfully) and it makes the record all the more fun for it. I'm going to leave you with Alive, currently my favorite track from Head First and wish you a great weekend - this is the perfect soundtack for that!