Adventures In Modern French Music: elodieO (Stubborn)

One of the most intriguing debut albums of the year is courtesy of Parisian born elodieO, a talented up and coming artist formerly of the terrific and acclaimed band Elm.
The album, entitled Stubborn, streets in America in mid August and it’s an interesting mixture of Nicoesque vocals (Nico is not surprisingly among elodieO’s biggest influences), electronica, and trip hop with hints of sixties Samba thrown in for good measure.
Made up of eleven tracks almost entirely written and produced by elodieO herself (with some help from The Brazilian Girls and a talented band of studio musicians who give what could have been an overtly electronic album a nice acoustic and organic feel), Stubborn is quite a striking work.
Making the album an even more well rounded affair are elodieO’s choices of cover versions. Nestled alongside her own songs are the terrific “L’Attente”, a lovely track taken from a Rilke poem, a strong cover of Serge Gainsbourg’s “l’eau a la bouche” and a moving mostly spoken version of The Cure’s “Home”.
Among elodieO’s own songs, highlights include the hypnotic opener, “La Mer”, the infectious single “Milk and Honey” (co-written by Yuriy Gavrilenko) and the mesmerizing “Unexpected So”, a track that recalls some of Bjork’s finest early work.
Stubborn continues Elm’s streak of marking elodieO as one of the more striking experimental French artists on the scene and it would fit nicely on a shelf with Camille’s Le Fil or Emilie Simon’s The Flower Book.
The album, courtesy of New York’s Mulatta Records, makes its American debut on August 19th. More information on elodieO can be found at her MySpace or her official page which is currently being updated. The original old official page can also be viewed here and contains quite a bit of information about this very promising young artist.