somewhere I read that nouvelle vague is french for bossa nova (portugese) and new wave (english). so, if camping's flirt with bossa nova seemed like destined for failure then nouvelle vagues' album seemed doubly so. basically, this is an album of bossa nova covers of joy division, pil, the clash, dead kennedys, the sisters of mercy, the cure, and others. basically songs that don't really lend themselves to the treatment they receive here in an obvious way. naturally, the results are a little mixed but overall it is an inspired effort and the successes (or not) are not where you expect to find them. e.g, the depeche mode doesn't quite work as well as it should while the cover of love will tear us apart works pretty well, perhaps because the band avoids giving too straight of a reading of the song. perhaps the biggest surprise is too drunk to fuck, which has never sounded as intoxicatingly fun. the greatest asset of this album is that it doesn't succumb to thinking of itself as a "fun bossa nova project" but attempts instead to focus on what it was that made many of these songs so great to begin with while offering a different interpretation.
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