Review: Emilie Simon’s March of the Empress

...I have a stack of CDs for review that I’m just getting around to checking and one of them is March of the Empress (which streeted on the 3rd) by France’s Emilie Simon who made her debut in the states last year with the album The Flower Book. This newer outing features tunes from the French version of Luc Jacquet’s 2005 documentary La Marche De l’Empereur (March of the Penguins) and has never been released in the US in its full configuration…Let me dive right on in and get most of my name-dropping out of the way early by saying that at points I’m reminded of Bjork (without the jugular-threatening shrieks) mixed with Dido (only better) with a sprinkling of Europe’s Asura group and Galia Durant from Psapp all garnished with some Kate Bush…

...as I type this, I’m really vibing on tunes like “The Egg” and “To the Dancers on the Ice” both of which encapsulate the gist of everything said above…”Song of the Sea” evokes images of Sedna, the Inuit water goddess for some reason and the vox on “Attack of the Killer Birds” are as foreboding as the title implies but the gears shift a bit once the drumming begins on “Song of the Storm”...Conversely, there are a couple of interlude-ish non vocal tracks evocative of the Kronos Quartet (last one) like “Aurora Australis”and “Mother’s Pain” but this is a soundtrack and they stay true to the thrust of the icy theme that Simon was shooting for when approached to work on the film…taken as a whole, it’s safe to say that there’s a grip of saturnine sounds on The Empress, so you’ll have to be in a certain state to consume it all properly…

























All of the above stated, as far as soundtracks go this is one of the better ones to come out in a genre dominated by orchestral composers, acoustic guitarists and scores that read like K-Tel best-of-whatever compilations, here’s something that takes a somewhat different approach…and I haven’t seen the film yet, either…check out “To the Dancers on the Ice” on which you can hear Simon hook up with the skills she learned at the Sorbonne and the the Institute de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique Musique at the Centre Pompidou (this chanteuse also plays bass, guitar, keys and she still covered Iggy Pop’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog” on her first album, no less)— I like ‘em brainy ‘n broody, yo…

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