ARNAUD FLEURENT-DIDIER
La Reproduction
(Columbia/Sony Music)

If you're a lover of chanson-tinged pop and you found Benjamin Biolay's recent double-LP a letdown, then there's bittersweet relief to be found in this song collection, which covers similarly vast instrumental terrain with an ease that the ostentatious Biolay didn't manage. Fleurent-Didier reminds me a bit of Gerard Manset, but not quite as brooding -- there's modernity and whimsy to his compositions and vocal delivery. The interplay between vulnerable voice, acoustic guitar, piano, electronics, and orchestration in "Reproductions" is flat-out gorgeous. The Contempt-inflected music video for that song is one of the best I've seen in quite a while. Totally, tenderly, tragically, after the jump.

ARNAUD FLEURENT-DIDIER, "Reproductions":