Long-time readers of hecklerspray should cast their mind back to almost exactly one year ago when we interviewed Marion Benoist and Fred De Fred from Sheffield/ France group The Lovers, a group so sleazily kitsch that we couldn't help falling in love with them.
And now, finally, the debut album by The Lovers – handily entitled The Lovers – is about to be released on Monday. We gave The Lovers a spin expecting three quarters of an hour of top-quality sordid French irony, but the big surprise is that in The Lovers, The Lovers have knocked up an astonishingly mature album that manages to be funny, sexy, funky, modern and heartbreaking all at once. Nous approuvons.
Back when we interviewed The Lovers last year, we did so on the basis of two songs – La Le, a jokey, sputtering French grammar lesson that ended up on a McDonalds advert; and La Desgustation – a filthily sighed invitation to "come taste my wine" that Jarvis Cocker co-wrote. For this Gainsbourg-mining carnality alone The Lovers deserved all kinds of attention, but now the album The Lovers is getting an official release it's time for a quick reassessment.
Since both La Le and La Desgustation appear on The Lovers, we have to admit thinking The Lovers was destined to become the French loungepop equivalent of Permission To Land by The Darkness – fun for a while until the joke quickly wore thin. And with songs like French Kiss ("you know when I get pissed, I like to give a french kiss") and the Raccrochez C'est Une Horreur-referencing Ne Worry Pas (where a woman is amusingly oblivious to her partner's infidelities) it looked as if our initial estimation of The Lovers was going to be bang on.
Not that there'd be anything wrong with that – even as a quickly-forgotten album, songs like Crik Crak and Frog 'N' Snail would push The Lovers into highly recommended territory – but then, a few songs in, The Lovers turn everything on its head with a flurry of tunes that hit you with something truly unexpected: pathos.
With songs like Bring Your Chaos and Moi Je Suis Faite, The Lovers can prove that they're capable of dropping the irony to do a tune justice when it's necessary – the latter in particular being an astonishingly sophisticated piece of catchy, classic pop – but towards the end of The Lovers, both Marion and Fred turn in individual tracks that show the flipside to all the hedonism to extraordinary effect. Marion's Basque Country draws parallels between her native Basque and her job as a bunnygirl with equal depression and resignation: "I was just being nice so you'd tip me/ Jesus Christ, what is it with you guys?" while Fred's Fred De Fred explores the lonely life of a playboy too scared to settle down.
It's worth pointing out, though, that neither of these two songs were written by The Lovers, instead being at least partially penned by Jarvis Cocker – easily turning in his best work since This Is Hardcore. And, by providing an emotional core to the album, they ensure that you'll come back to The Lovers again and again.
So there you have it – The Lovers by The Lovers. Forget what happened last weekend, these are the real Eurovision winners.