Le Goudronicon
Free song for Europe!
Brigitte Fontaine is an icon of the French avant-garde, a flipped-out weirdo genius who has been consistently releasing great music since the early 1960s. Her singing style–disaffected without seeming like an affectation–her ability to blend humor and major gravitas, her seeming flippancy about life and death, and her willingness to take on serious issues: these are all hugely inspiring to us. So is her path of unswerving weirdness.
We can only hope that our frantic, starry-eyed cribbing of Fontaine makes us better people.
In the meantime, we wanted to pay homage, and so we recorded a cover of one of her greatest songs, Le Goudron. Le Goudron is a surrealist revolutionary song originally recorded in 1969 with The Art Ensemble of Chicago, from the crazy-good album Comme A La Radio; we’ve reinvented its naive-apocalyptic candor for a neon-soaked dance floor. And yes, this is a YACHT recording in French! Claire’s first language is French, but we’ve never made a song in her native language before. With a European tour coming up, we figured now’s the time.
Le Goudron is FREE.
Of course, we made a video too. Big thanks to David Scott Stone and Jim Smith for lending us lasers and letting us shoot at The Smell, respectively.
SHANGRI-LA TOUR 2012: PT.2 EUROPE
TICKETS 04-26 Nantes, FR – Pôle Etudiant
TICKETS 04-27 Tours, FR – Le Temps Machine
TICKETS 04-28 Paris, FR – KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD @ Gaîté Lyrique
TICKETS 04-30 Heidelberg, DE – Halle01
TICKETS 05-01 Frankfurt, DE – Zoom
TICKETS 05-02 St. Gallen, CH – Palace
TICKETS 05-03 Dublin, IE – Workmansclub
TICKETS 05-05 Belfast, UK – Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival
TICKETS 05-06 Bristol, UK – Simple Things Festival
TICKETS 05-08 London, UK – XOYO
TICKETS 05-11 Brighton, UK – The Great Escape @ Digital
TICKETS 05-13 Norwich, UK – Norwich & Norfolk Festival
TICKETS 05-14 Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso
TICKETS 05-15 Brussels, BE – Les Nuits De Botanique Festival
TICKETS 05-16 Lyon, FR – Nuits Sonores Festival
TICKETS 05-17 Barcelona, ES – Music Hall
TICKETS 05-18 Madrid, ES – Charada
TICKETS 05-19 Guimaraes, PT – Vila Flor
Le temps est un bâteau, la terre est un gâteau!
☮♥▲,
YACHT