Camille: B or Not B

I don't recall how I first stumbled across the novelty band Nouvelle Vague, which turns New Wave and punk standards into breathy bossa nova (a fun shtick, though a little of it goes a long way). But that's how I first heard the great French singer Camille Dalmais, who goes simply by her first name, and who sang some of Nouvelle Vague's most memorable covers (including "Making Plans for Nigel", "Guns of Brixton," and "Too Drunk to Fuck").

Those larky renditions gave no inkling of Camille's true talent and preoccupations, which became clear on the extraordinary 2005 record Le Fil. I guess you could say that, like Nouvelle Vague's oeuvre, this record is a kind of stunt—only it's a much more single-minded and sustained stunt, and brilliantly executed to boot. Put simply, it has an insistent low-level drone on the note B under every track, which isn't always clearly audible but which underpins all of the songs' harmony, and means that practically the whole record is in the key of B major or minor (she saves a few surprises for later). Add to that the fact that she makes a majority of the sounds herself, including some mouth and body percussion, with minimal but judicious instrumental support, and you have a high-wire act comparable in its voice-forward soundscaping to Björk's Medulla, Petra Haden's The Who Sell Out, and Rosalía's El Mal Querer. Of those, Camille's is the one I go back to most often and eagerly (Rosalía's is a close second).

The signature song from it, and the one that could be considered the portable Camille, is the beguiling, skittering "Au Port":

That's from a relatively recent concert; I also quite like this version from Jools Holland's old TV show, which really showcases her body-voice work (at one point a band member comes up from behind and karate-chops her back while she's producing notes, to delightfully hiccupy effect), but it's not a very good quality upload. In a similar vein is the kicky "Ta Douleur":

It's not until Le Fil's 12th song of 15, the movingly spare, eerie "Pâle Septembre," that she suddenly moves to the key of G; next, on the short and stately "Rue de Ménilmontant," she sings in E, before returning home to a calm, cool B for an understated closer, "Quand je marche." (There are some bonus tracks, including "Lumière," which is in E.) But the key to Le Fil's success is neither distractable variety nor maddening consistency but something I'd have to call range. Camille has that in spades, not only in the strict vocal sense (though actually her pipes are objectively a bit limited, something she makes light of in this song), but also in terms of the spectrum of colors and emotions her voice can convey, both in solo lines and in the music she shapes around them (also made mostly with her voice). I've since devoured all her records, including a previous release called Le Sac de Filles, which is more typically French-chanteuse-y, including an obligatory ode to "Paris"; the drily sweet Ilo Veyou; a non-cynical but not entirely convincing stab at English-language pop called Music Hole; and a newer collection, Ouï.

There isn't really a bad note among them, but I have to say Camille's true métier—perhaps unsurprisingly, given her emphasis on body music—seems to be live performance. It's to my great regret that I haven't seen her live, but videos of her concerts and live appearances, many in non-traditional spaces with little or no amplification, make for a very satisyfing YouTube wormhole (it's also how I stumbled on Barbatuques). Here's a sample of the some the gems I've found, which may give a flavor of her genius in a few different modes. First, the utterly charming "Bubble Lady," from a concert at the Olympia:

Next is this hushed reverie in an old church, in which her meticulous solo vocalization of chords around a melody put me in mind of the Bach cello concerti, if much quieter and more delicate:

For a sense of her infectious abandon as a performer, you can't do much better than this rendition of an English-language original, which takes a common country-music trope about infidelity and turns it into a jubilant, defiant body slam.

In a kitschier vein, you can get a sense of her sheer, unflappable nerve in this TV appearance covering a Michael Jackson hit:

And lest she seem all fun and games, check out the real anguish she can render, in this somewhat somnambulant but affecting song in English:

In short, if I had to sum up the appeal of Camille, I might say that she's what you'd get if Björk were human. But that's not fair, either to the elf queen of Icelandic pop or to Camille, whose blend of gnomic drollery (i.e., a song praising her home country for its contribution to world culture, "photocopies") and musical precision, of intensity and cool, feels both distinctly French and uniquely her own.