After the runaway success of her charming, folksy first album,
Quelqu'un M'a Dit,
Carla Bruni's sophomore effort takes a more difficult route and sees her setting canonical works by such poets as
Yeats and
Emily Dickinson to music. The lines "Wrapping that foul body up/In as foul a rag" in
Yeats' "Those Dancing Days Are Gone" are delivered almost winsomely, where in fact the word "foul" should be allowed to drag, and to weigh down the rest of the line. Metered verse cannot fit this sort of verse-verse-chorus model. Of course, an album must be judged on its musical merits, and the overall mixture of rhythm and pedal steel guitars, with a touch of harmonica here and there, is a serviceable foil to
Bruni's smoky voice. Although this impersonal set of disparate poems is often set to incongruous arrangements, the doo wop piano-and-guitar jam on
Dickinson's "If You Were Coming in the Fall" is a highlight, lending itself oddly well to
Bruni's sauce. ~ Caspar Salmon