Nouvelle Vague 3

What Nouvelle Vague have done for eighties classics is the stuff of legend. Here's a band that have taken songs that we all know and love and run them through the French pop filter for swinging tunes. As terrifying as that sounded originally, what ended up happening was that those tunes were given a new lease on life thanks to a deeply thrilling and sexy take on what had essentially become standards. Three albums in and Nouvelle Vague are still at it and still making songs by Sting sound seductive.

Nouvelle Vaugue 3 is yet another brilliant album of covers that sounds like Mazzy Star's career was resurrected in a Parisian cafe. Sweetly seductive and altogether gorgeous, many of the songs on Nouvelle Vaugue 3 sound nothing like the originals and in fact at times you may just be left scratching your heads wondering what the heck you just heard. From Depeche Mode and the Psychedelic Furs, to the Go-Gos and The Police, Nouvelle Vague make these songs and the 80's seem like an era of relaxed chilled out bliss. It's truly awesome just to hear how the group goes about rearranging each of these songs and how their fresh takes on them sometimes sound better than the original. With a host of the original artists and a bevy or singers, Nouvelle Vague offer up a variety of intriguing combinations that will leave you wish it was 1986 all over again.

Jazzy, chilled, delicate, and quiet, much of Nouvelle Vaugue 3 is a subtle trip back in time. While, their idea may be a bit played out, this is a group so consistant and so good at what they do it simply doesn't matter how cliche the idea is. After three albums, you have to hand it to them for coming up with new songs to give the NV treatment because short of hair metal covers you have to wonder when they're going to run out. Until that time, here's hoping Nouvelle Vague will continue to be as creative and enchanting as they've been thus far because they're simply awesome at what they do and if they do a lounge version of "Bathroom Wall," that would be dead exciting too.