Seduced by the song

Music that’s popular in France doesn’t often translate to American audiences, which is why the weepy ballads, over-produced Europop and French-fried hip-hop that dominate the radio there infrequently land anywhere in the U.S. other than record-store import bins.

French musicians who do make a name for themselves here are usually under-appreciated in their home country -- artistically respected but commercially missing the mark, the French equivalent of American indie rock. But what doesn’t work in France may click with Americans, especially those with a taste for ‘60s-style chansons.

Over the next few months, several Parisian artists are releasing records here. Together they form a sort of retro French foursome, with Keren Ann channeling the guitar-centric romanticism of Francoise Hardy, Coralie Clement acting as sexed-up soprano Jane Birkin, Benjamin Biolay a new-fangled Serge Gainsbourg and Carla Bruni the superbabe turned singer a la Brigitte Bardot.

Of the four, Bruni is the most commercially successful back home but Keren Ann is probably best known here, thanks to a small fan base built around “Not Going Anywhere,” her first English-language album, released last summer by Blue Note affiliate Metro Blue. Keren Ann’s soft, lyrical delivery and gently cascading orchestration are easy to fall in love with. New Yorker critic Sasha Frere-Jones found “Not Going Anywhere” so “luminous” he listened to it more than any other album last year.

This week, the 31-year-old singer-songwriter returns with another gorgeous collection of hushed, unhurried melodies. Sung in French and English, “Nolita” is further evidence of Keren Ann’s gift for channeling mood into song and her predilection for romantic tragedy. Layering airy vocals and horns over maudlin strings, her music casts a spell.

Keren Ann is based in Paris, but “Nolita” takes its name from the New York City neighborhood where she spent much of last year writing it: North of Little Italy. The release of “Not Going Anywhere” had brought Keren Ann to New York to perform and promote the record. She spent her remaining time writing.

“Who doesn’t want to spend time in New York? Who doesn’t want to spend time in Paris?” Keren Ann asked rhetorically, smoking a cigarette and sipping fresh-squeezed orange juice poolside recently at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood. “They’re perfect for people who like to isolate and write and make their own calm environment while knowing that outside is a big city.”

They’re also great for people with a cosmopolitan upbringing. Keren Ann is not French ethnically. Born in Israel to a Russian-Polish father and Dutch-Indonesian mother, her full name is Keren Ann Zeidel. Her early years were spent in Israel and Holland. She moved to Paris with her family when she was 11.

It was Keren Ann’s first time in France, but it was not her first experience with French music. That came much earlier and through her mother, who often played albums by Hardy and Gainsbourg. In their ‘60s heyday, Hardy was known as the French Bob Dylan, and Gainsbourg a seductive, melodic cad. Her favorite artists back then, Hardy and Gainsbourg remain her favorites now, and you can hear traces of both in her music.

“I think the first attachment was for the sound because I couldn’t understand the language,” said Keren Ann, who speaks Dutch and Hebrew in addition to French and English. “Francoise Hardy always said she searched for a British sound, and that’s why her music is different, so it’s a mixture of the French chansons, or way of writing, but it’s the production that was really appealing to me.”

Like Hardy’s, Keren Ann’s music also transcends language. Whether her lyrics are in French or English doesn’t matter as much as the feel of her songs.

“Sometimes you don’t even need to know what they’re saying. The mood and vibe is so joyous and fun,” said Nettwerk Productions’ Mark Jowett, referring to Keren Ann, Biolay and Clement.

“It’s a really interesting time right now in French pop music. It’s gone back to a singer-songwriter style, but rather than it being overly heavy, there’s a lot of playfulness in the use of melody and arrangements.”

Riding a new wave

Keren ANN is leading a bit of a French invasion. Her new album will be followed with releases from two Nettwerk artists licensed through EMI France: Clement’s “Bye Bye Beaute” and “A l’Origine” by her brother, Biolay, a critics’ darling who’s been widely hailed as the vanguard of a new movement in France.

Fun, frothy guitar pop topped with whispery, girlie-girl vocals, “Bye Bye Beaute” is the second Clement record to be released in France and in the U.S. “A l’Origine” is Biolay’s third solo album, but it’s his first to make its way to the U.S. without an import label.

Of the two, Biolay is a far greater talent, but he may prove less accessible to American audiences. His vocals are rich, his production dense, his lyrics grounded in emotional truth. Musically, he is Gainsbourg, Phil Spector and John Lennon rolled into one -- visionary, if busy and referentially complex. The opening track of “A l’Origine,” for example, ends with a swirling, Beatles-esque “A Day in the Life” disintegration. It isn’t the most welcoming opener to the intricately orchestrated rock that rounds out the record, but it is indicative of his strongest influence -- ‘60s English pop.

Biolay, 32, first came on the scene 12 years ago with a solo EP, which was released by EMI France. But listening to it afterward, “I really thought I was singing [very badly],” Biolay said by phone from Paris. So he stopped for several years. To fulfill his contractual obligation to EMI, he turned his attention to writing and producing records for other French artists, including the pop group Autour de Lucie, his sister and aging crooner Henri Salvador.

It was for Salvador’s hit 2000 album “Jardin d’Hiver” that Biolay also began collaborating with Keren Ann. After co-writing the Salvador record, the two worked together on Keren Ann’s solo releases.

Recorded in French and released only in Europe, those early albums were both co-written and produced by Biolay. Her 2004 album, “Not Going Anywhere,” also featured Biolay’s writing and production, but his role had been cut to about half, with Keren Ann writing and producing the remainder.

Degrees of fame

Biolay and Keren Ann worked together only from 2000 to 2002, during which time they were briefly romantically involved, but those two years were incredibly prolific. Some of the songs they wrote are still being recorded and released by other French singers.

In France, their names are almost invariably linked. They are also well known, but their fame pales in comparison to supermodel-turned-singer Bruni, who scored a massive hit two years ago with her debut record, “Quelqu’un M’a Dit.” It has sold 1.5 million copies in France alone.

The record wasn’t released in the U.S. until last November, and then only through Barnes & Noble -- a marketing idea conceived to compensate for Bruni’s inability to tour the U.S. or accommodate much American press. Barnes & Noble’s exclusive right to the domestic release ends March 22, when the record will roll out to other retailers nationally.

It’s testimony to the record’s strength that Bruni has sold 50,000 copies in the U.S., almost exclusively the result of in-store play at the national bookstore chain and word of mouth rather than radio. Sung in French, the record is as easy on the ears as its singer is on the eyes. Listening to it, you can almost see Bruni running in slow motion through the French countryside.

Built around a pair of guitars -- one strummy, the other a slide -- the arrangements are simple. While Bruni’s vocals tend to crack or blank out when she travels toward the upper register, there’s a tenderness there, almost as if she were singing to a child or a lover.

What she and today’s other Parisian chanteuses are singing about, only French speakers know, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

“As much as we seem to be down on France these days, American audiences really like their French female singers. The language is obviously a very pretty language,” said V2 Records’ Dan Cohen. “It’s one of those things with world music albums. If they’re melodic, people react to it. They don’t necessarily care what the lyrics are.”

As Keren Ann said, “It’s a matter of atmosphere.”

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On the Web

To hear samples from “Quelqu’un M’a Dit,” “Bye Bye Beaute,” “A l’Origine” and “Nolita,” visit calendarlive.com/French.