Francesca Blanchard’s Poignant Eulogy and Whole-Hearted Welcome

Francesca Blanchard

Deux Visions (Vis-A-Vis, 2015)

Okay, I’ll admit it – sometimes when I read “deeply personal” and “singer-songwriter” on press material I inwardly cringe a little. Okay, most of the time I cringe. Unfortunately, “deeply personal” often means only personal to the singer-songwriter and “singer-songwriter” is often a translation that instrumentation is limited to a lone acoustic guitar. How many breathy voiced singers can the music industry produce? While I have nothing against the accepted singer-songwriter mood, it’s just usually not my thing, as in I’d rather hear cows mooing than the whispered, moody angst by people with no real problems. As a music listener, I’d like a singer/songwriter go that extra mile to reach beyond expectation and pay attention to the music.

A luck would have it I have just the CD. Let me recommend Francesca Blanchard’s Deux Visions on the Cumbancha label. Following the 2011 EP release of Songs on an Ovation, Ms. Blanchard steps up and provides some real interest on her vision of the singer-songwriter recording.

Kicking the standard fare, Deux Visions is more than guitar and Ms. Blanchard’s lovely vocals; it’s brightened with drums, organ, strings, pedal steel guitar, piano, bass, brass, accordion and banjo, making it more than the message.

Paying homage to her dual background of a childhood in southern France and a time spent in Vermont, Ms. Blanchard splits up her vocals between French and English. Colored by her love of folk, rock, jazz, French chanson, soul, world music and pop, Ms. Blanchard takes Deux Visions beyond the standard spare singer-songwriter route by encompassing one genre into another and folding one influence into another on the twelve tracks of Deux Visions.

Opening with her sweetly sultry French vocals on “Rame,” this track traces a folksy, bluesy path accented by some lush pedal steel lines that a little reminiscent of Chris Isaak. Moving on to the dulcet “Save a Different Way,” the wide open sky feel of “Le Blues” and the delicate, piano laced “Home Is a Cage,” Ms. Blanchard makes the most of her vocals, giving listeners glimpses of her interior intent.

 

 

Other treats include the French influenced “Wanderer,” the country tinged “Now That You Are Gone” and the sweetly worked “Tu N’Existes Pas” edged with cello and violin.

 

 

Ms. Blanchard explains Deux Visions by saying, “All these ‘selves’ I carry, that make me the whole being that I am, the artist I’ve become…they are what I wanted to devote this album to. It is an ode to where I’ve been and where I’ll go; who I was and who I’ve become. The album is both a bittersweet eulogy and a heartfelt welcome.”