Christine And The Queens have dropped their new album Redcar (Picture: Pierre-Ange Carlotti)
At first she was Héloïse Letissier. Then they were Chris. Now he is Redcar – a new creation, or perhaps the fully realised form, of where Christine And The Queens was headed all along.
Don’t be misled by the stage name; the Queens, much like Marina’s former Diamonds, are notional, not a backing group – a tribute to the drag acts that inspired this French art-pop solo artist early in his progress.
Redcar is a transgender persona, evidently, although he also strongly evokes the lesbian dandy, that female figure in male dress who was a fixture of the 1930s demi-monde – a suave Count Grazinski to Letissier’s Julie Andrews, for anyone who remembers Blake Edwards’ 1982 film Victor/Victoria, remarkably gender-fluid for its time.Â
The mood, the aesthetic of the third Christine And The Queens album strongly evokes both eras: the louche, melancholic, soulful pre-war Parisian cabaret; the glistening, darkly romantic synth-pop of the early 1980s. Love, passion, obsession, possession, surrender: these are its themes.
The aesthetic of the third Christine And The Queens album strongly evokes both eras (Picture: Pierre-Ange Carlotti)
Hardly new ideas for pop music, but these staples are eternal, and in Letissier’s hands, there is no danger they will turn into an elongated perfume advert. This is not merely an album about love, but about amour.
Its sheer Frenchness, the sound and feel of the language, gives it a resonance to the Anglophone ear that is refined by Letissier with not only the surest of touches in the studio, but outstanding songwriting.
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If Françoise Hardy had fronted Roxy Music at their most elegant and immaculate, or Visage at their most exotic and mysterious, it might have sounded very much like this, but it could not have been silkier or more intoxicating.
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The aesthetic of the third Christine And The Queens album strongly evokes both eras.Â
