Tunes for Tuesdays: La Grande Sophie

Elle est un belle découverte pour tous les blogettes ce soir. Je pense ainsi, au moins. Une autre note: elle ressemble PJ Harvey et Nigella Lawson, eh? Un peu, peut-être?

It is spring and the warm air is mottled with thoughts of summer and the promise of languid evenings. The world is finished its thaw and folks are shedding those winter layers for light, airy summer fabrics. What better music to celebrate with than the rich, layered tones of une chanteuse compositrice française?

Je me réfère à la La Grande Sophie, naturellement.

I imagine this association between the onset of spring and la musique francophone is a direct result of my love for Amélie Poulain from the glorious, surreal film, Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001). If the French are said to pursue the pleasures of life and take joy from the world around them, La Grande Sophie offers the perfect soundtrack to set the pace.

Sophie Huriaux hails from idyllic Thionville en Moselle, France, where she started her music career at the tender age of nine. Huriaux pursued the visual arts with a specific focus on sculpture for most of her young adulthood, a move that led her to the Fine Arts school in Marseille. Two years into the program, she made the leap into music and has never turned back.

This blogette right here is thankful for her self-revelation and her prowess with a guitar.

New listeners will discover quite the evolution in Ms. Sophie's sound since her debut in the first half of the 1990s. She started off with a harder, spunkier rock influence that carried her through to 2003 with the album Et si c'était moi. Tracks like "Du courage" felt like a call to arms for other young women keen on storming the world at large. Her next album, La suite... (2005), stayed true to her pop-rock roots, however, a slow and delicious change was creeping up into her albums. Ms. Sophie began to borrow from the sweet, excitable sounds of French folk music, adding a distinct energy to her tracks and giving credit to her cultural roots.

With her latest album, Des vagues et des ruisseaux (2009), La Grande Sophie allowed that sound to flourish and, with it, her popularity at home and in Quebec has soared.

So, to help readers out there celebrate the extra hours of sunlight and the return of warmer weather, I offer the first single from her current album. It's a sweet little song I've been repeating each morning before work -- I'm getting closer to the lyrics, at least from a phonetic standpoint. For a pleasant twist, here she is performing "Quelqu'un d'autre" (and a little extra) in a live, acoustic, artsy way for Côté Blogue:

Une belle voix, n'est-ce pas? I think La Grande Sophie will launch a francophone craze here on the ol' playlist for the spring/early summer months. Heck, if you can't be in France, you best enjoy their musical exports, correct?

Pratiquez votre accent français, dames, and succumb to those French-tailored suits while you're at it.