Lou Doillon - Places

Successful Singspeaking Route

In a period when so many female vocalists regurgitate an affected wispy slur, French actress and model Lou Doillon performs admirably in another career and on new album Places, her strength in a surprisingly effective half-spoken voice. She can sing strongly – and that is another facet of her potency, this volume and clarity – but her stylistic nuance is to singspeak across most of these pop tracks. What I do like is the foregrounding of the vocal, and fifth track Same Old Game is a good example with a simple acoustic guitar and other lightly layered instrumentation placing the voice intimately to the front. Indeed, simplicity informs the production throughout and this suggests and also delivers confidence in the singing, occasional harmonising adding further assistance. 

Title track Places crystallises all of this powerfully in a narrated opening over piano that seems to tell an apocalyptic story of humanity over-reaching itself, and the crescendo of its climatic rising is genuinely potent. When Doillon moves from the spoken to her singing voice, it is accentuated with this by now familiar shift as much as the musical upsurge. This is followed by closing track Real Smart where again her strongly sustained singspeaking impresses with its consistency. An excellent album to dispel any doubts there might be about Jane Birkin’s daughter pursuing this musical route.