Mlle Caro & Franck Garcia - Pain Disappears (Phantom Sound & Vision)
4/5
By: Michael Cragg
Let us for a minute descend into National musical stereotypes: The French seem to know their way around all things achingly lovelorn and delicate, from Serge Gainsbourg to Air to Sebastien Tellier. Even Daft Punk have been known to dish out the odd romantic ballad, just with more irony then genuine emotion. So it's no surprise to find that French duo Madamoiselle Caro (aka Caroline Laher) and collaborator Franck Garcia have crafted an album of ten heart crushingly sad break-up songs that you can also dance to, if you enjoy dancing while crying that is.
'Always You' opens proceedings in a typically maudlin fashion, a repetitive, almost naïve beat, giving way to some delicate piano and Garcia's almost spoken lyrics. On 'Apologies' the energy levels are raised slightly by a complex set of beats and some menacing keyboard swashes. Unfortunately, any real sense of sadness is lost slightly as Garcia's strong accent makes the line "I will take your pain" actually sound like "I will take your pen", such biro nabbing antics just not resonating with me.
By the midway point however, real tears start to flow with the fragile 'Mon Ange', a song so beautiful it would make a docker weep. During moments like this you're reminded of Air's underrated 10,000hz Legend, an album built on a kind of electronic soul music, as if sung by aliens or robots.
As the album draws to a close they return to the dancefloor with the hypnotic 'Lost' and the relatively pounding 'No Name'. Only the awful dalliance with guitars on 'Reasons To Stay' hits a major bum note. With New York favourites Hercules and Love Affair also getting disco sadness onto the dance floor, now might be quite a good time to embrace another French duo with a beating heart behind their electronic veneer.
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