NO PROMISES - CARLA BRUNI
Less than a minute into Carla Bruni’s second album, you’re just like the French president: hopelessly seduced. The former supermodel has the gossamer alto of so many other singing beauties — Bridgette Bardot, Marianne Faithfull, Francoise Hardy. But Bruni’s source material isn’t her own elegant malaise. It’s 11 of the world’s most celebrated English-language poems, set to her own simple, seaside folk. “Come let me sing into your ear/Those dancing days are gone,” she lilts on the harmonica-laden opener, lyrics courtesy of William Butler Yeats. It’s an achievement just to fit the heady verbiage into a verse-chorus structure. But to do it in a way that seems as natural as the paparazzi at her back is a show of artistic prowess. As mature as it is playful, this album is pure pleasure.
