Roseaux

by Roseaux

Roseaux is one of the better albums I've bought in the last year.  It's a collection of ten songs performed by a group of French musicians, working under the tutelage and vision of producer Emile Omar.  The other musicians are cellist Clément Petit and Alex Finkin, a multi-instrumentalist.  They are joined on vocals by Aloe Blacc, who sings a number of covers that are both familiar and rendered anew.  Other various musicians show up as needed.

Musically, this is a sparse but very pretty album, recreating songs by artists as varied as The Police, Pearl Jam, Patti Labelle, and the Brazilian band Nazaré Peirera.  This album is interesting because all of these songs, from so many different traditions, end up sounding like they come from the same era and place.

Apparently these songs were recorded before the ones on Blacc's excellent Good Things album, and its interesting to here him sound so much quieter, and almost morose on some tracks.  This is a bluesy, soulful exploration.

This is a great album to sit back and relax to.  I don't think the cd has been released in North America yet (I ordered mine from France), but this is worth picking up in whatever format you can find.