Delightful, funny and sophisticated European post punk, new wave, with a female vocalist accompanied by violins, pianos, accordions, percussion, and guitars singing great songs.

15 MP3 Songs
POP: New Wave, POP: Euro-Pop

Details:
Hermineâs most recent performances in 2008 were typically at a church stop on a bicycle rally in Northern France and at Andrew Loganâs Glasshouse in London. âWhoâll Come Walking ?â on Salome discs is a collection of previously unreleased recordings, following the cd release of âThe World on my platesâ and âLonely at the Topâ on LTM records.

There are many articles elsewhere on the internet about Hermine, but for those who donât know her live show or her âstyleâ an early review in The Stage described Hermine as "a beautiful girl who can't sing and is liable to break down into a fit of giggles, and is quite frankly hilarious".

Edward L. Fox of the NME wrote that Hermine "sings quiet, funny songs to a tinkly piano. She soothes the minds of the drinking and lounging audience away from thoughts of the hail of unemployment statistics going on outside. Her songs are all about repression and physical pain. The voice is imperfect and fragile, with a strong accent. She begins her act on a high stool in the dark, a red bicycle lamp held in each hand below her face, and sings a 'torch' song called Blue Angel in the red light. She disappears, then re-enters the light to sing again in a hesitant, distant style, as if she was performing in public for the first time."

Of her distinctive accent, Hermine revealed: "I can't stop it. People often think it's a send-up, like an affectation, but it is for real. It's terribly bad, because I can't complain when I go to the shops, people just laugh⦠I'm really not interested in singing as such. For me it's a lot to do with delivery, and interpretation. I know it's pretty erratic. Either you go for it or you can't stand it. It must annoy a number of people that someone like me could get away with so much. I just try things out. I don't call myself an artist or a singer or anything like that. I find myself being called a performance artist, but it certainly wasn't anything of my doing." (Square Peg )


Hermineâs fragile, surreal, warm and comic performance is a lot more sophisticated and entertaining than reviewers can easily indicate. Capturing the wit, energy, enthusiasm and the idiosyncratic beauty and French farce of this and transferring it to an entertaining recording has always been a challenge. This CD goes a long way towards achieving this, nicely balanced with a good variation of moods and recorded for the most part with a slightly loose rein. Sometimes comic, sometimes Cajun folksy, sometimes haunting. It is a fine third album and possibly contains some of her most evocative recordings to date.

People who are interested in should consider this download.