April March-- Chrominance Decoder

(Ideal / Mammoth / Tricatel 0010)

A little American girl from New Jersey who thinks she's the Francoise Hardy of the '90's?

Well, yeah. Elinor Blake, aka April March, has been paying homage to Serge and France Gall and all the other purveyors of '60's French pop for years now, getting into it long before the current pack.

On this album, instead of covering Gainsbourg and Hardy tunes, she wrote most of the songs on her own, with the aid of her pal Bertrand Burgalat, and achieved a bit of a departure for herself. All the Yeh-Yeh stuff is still there, but there's also some

well-done electronica -- a couple tracks, remixed, could even light up a

dance floor, if the dancers were a little patient.

Fans of Air, Dmitri from Paris, et al, will really go for this.

--- Brian Greene