Album Of The Week: La Vita Nuova EP — Christine and the Queens
French-native Christine and the Queens has been the subject of massive critical appraise over her past two projects, 2018’s Chris and 2014’s Chaleur Humaine. La Vita Nuova should not break this trend… right?
Synth-Art-French-pop singer-songstress Héloïse Adelaïde Letissier, also known as Christine and the Queens, has returned with a new EP of songs. Personally, Chris has occupied a strange void in my music tastes. She’s someone whom I am very well aware of and of how good they are supposed to be, with nothing but rave reviews thrown their way. However, I have never properly sat down and listened to her, every track I heard in passing slid off me the moment I heard them, like an egg hitting a brick wall.
So in preparation for this review, I went through some highlights in her back catalogue, and she has some stellar tracks under her belt. There is some simple yet effective songwriting covered in basically every flavour of pop you could ask for. My expectations had definitely been raised for her new, albeit quite brief, project La Vita Nuova.
The opening track, ‘People, I’ve been sad’ begins the record with a perfectly grandiose understatement. The song’s title and actual track are easily the best part of this record. The track has a great hook and the backing vocals are soulfully tinged, acting as a natural development of her songwriting into new levels of maturity. It’s catchy, punchy and unravels lots of small details which reward close and repeated listens.
Once the first track closes, this project takes a nosedive off a forty-foot diving board into an empty pool. It physically breaks any good-will I once had towards this project. Usually, I would review the rest of the tracklisting more in-depth but, honestly, there is nothing notable about the rest of the tracks on this record. They consist of the first track diluted down to its weakest and most inoffensive parts. This is her worst songwriting to date. The track ‘Je disperais dans tes bras’ is pleasant enough, but the hook is lifeless. I’d like to think that I have quite a keen ear, but honestly, I listened to this record about half a dozen times before I realised that this was the same as the bonus track. I don’t know what this means — perhaps I am terrible at listening closely to music, or, perhaps more realistically, each of these tracks is so innocuous that ten minutes after the end of one track you can’t recognise it playing again.
The lyrics fall apart under slight scrutiny. The wordplay is lazy and uninspired, apart for some decent lines, most of it comes off as repetitive mopes about love without anything particularly biting to say about it. ‘Mountains (we met)’ begins well enough in the verses, about how she copes with problems by writing about them, but then this idea comes to a standstill with a redundant chorus which makes up half of the actual song. The beats are pristine but relatively unadventurous, amalgamating an intrepid pop-fare. The sparseness leave space for Chris to do something great, but that greatness never comes.
In fact, this entire project comes off as smug, pretentious wank. Now, there’s no problem with being pretentious as a musician, but only when what you are producing something that lives up to the hubris. Instead, Chris is unaware of how her contemporaries are leapfrogging her to the finish line. The art-pop world has been moving at a breakneck pace over the last two years — Halsey, Charlie XCX and Lana Del Rey have all releasing their best projects to date and in turn have flooded the mainstream with this skewed, synth-driven pop sound. As this project plays around with the basics of the genre, it sticks to the shallow depth of the pool, afraid to take off it’s armbands for fear of anything resembling physical exertion.
None of this project is bad, per se. I have had no problem in listening to it on repeat, trying to collect my thoughts to it. But it is so bland and played out. Could making something as inconsequential as this be an offence in itself? Yes, definitely. This EP should be hung by the neck outside the record labels in Hollywood, a warning to anyone who believes that their pretentious and unwavering naïve self-belief on its own will create anything other than a criminally dull singer-songwriter album.
Chris can be, nay, is, a talented songwriter: she makes pristine sounding tracks which are complemented by her beautiful voice. But this project is boring. This record will receive innumerous heaps of praise, critics will get down on their knees for Chris as she ticks all of their boxes and pushes all the right buttons. But I don’t get it. People always say you shouldn’t listen to critics and I can hold up this record as a shining example. In fact, while coming back to edit this review, the EP currently stands at 91% on Metacritic and 8.5/10 for the user score. I could write another review, with all the positive qualities that I can find about this record, and gush over it for hours until I need a new change of pants. But that’s what it wants you to do. It wants you to worship how clever it is, how its subtle choices in bass tone are symbolic of something greater. But really, La Vita Nuova is unlikable; repeat listens only lay the staleness of this project out bare. Trying to picture Chris playing any of these songs live highlights how this is an EP of 80% filler. These are the tracks that would be played live in between those such as ‘Girlfriend’ or ‘Tilted’ where you’d go for a fag break or a piss while it’s being performed.
I did take another look back through her discography to see if this takes precedent in her previous works and luckily it absolutely does not. Her second album has its moments and her first project is actually brilliant! Maybe all this critic wankery has internalised an intense hubris. Perhaps she believes that she can throw out whatever she wants.
After wading through all this negativity and finally regaining my composure, I’ll end this review on a positive. Listen to the first Christine and the Queens project Chaleur Humaine. It’s an absolute gem, and certainly makes me glad I have spent the time exploring her catalogue. And by all means, it’s far, far better than La Vita Nuova.
3/10
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