Sebastien Tellier - Sexuality

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  • Sebastien Tellier is a tease. His breakthrough hit of summer 2005, ‘La Ritournelle’, took four of its seven minutes to get to the vocals, and the album it introduced offered glimpses of genius, but no real insight into the man himself. Politics pinballed from ballads to electronica to action movie danger music, and covered subjects as diverse as Africa, the fate of Native Americans and, er…zombies. Since then renaissance man Tellier has proven impossible to pin down, by moving onto animation, soundtracks, even acting—both starring in and helping to score Mr. Oizo’s movie Steak. He still likes to defy expectations—being possibly the only singer ever to release a purely instrumental comeback single—but Sexuality, produced by Daft Punk’s Guy Manuel de Homem-Christo, is his most focused and accessible work to date. For now, Tellier has just one thing on his mind. This album is a musical red light district: sex is everywhere you turn. From the title, which on the review CD comes appended with a suggestive subtitle (‘Woodwork’), to the cover—a tiny man on horseback (Tellier?) looking out onto the vast open frontier of the naked female form—to the sensual video for the single ’Sexual Sportswear’. Most of the track names explicitly refer to love and love-making, and those that don’t hint at the man’s prowess (‘Une Heure’, ‘Fingers of Steel’), proclivities (‘L’amour et la Violence’) and possibly even length (‘Kilometer’). It seems that Sébastien’s genitals have a greater attention span than his brain, and following them has given him some much-needed direction. This is Tellier’s Let’s Get It On, his Erotica. The sultry late night mood of Sexuality borrows from these, and a host of other seminal (in every sense of the word) sources. Sébastien gets all Gaye on ‘Elle’ and ropes in Madonna groan-a-likes for the slow jams ‘Pomme’ and ‘Kilometer’, which could otherwise be a Neptunes-produced Timberlake tune. Guy Man is the perfect producer for the schizophrenic singer, drawing all his influences into a tight framework that reins in his greatest excesses while allowing him room to breathe…heavily. He is allowed to indulge long-standing fetishes like corny soft rock chord progressions (‘Look’), Vangelis synths (‘Sexual Sportswear’) and basslines not heard since Kate Bush’s ‘80s work (‘Une Heure’)—but never at the expense of a good song. The success of this measured approach can be heard in ‘Divine’, in which Tellier is given just a couple of instruments, a drum machine, his own voice and three minutes to create a pocket symphony, his answer to ‘Good Vibrations’. Sexuality is the best work in years from both the artist and the producer. Once the album is spent, the listener knows the formerly enigmatic Tellier intimately, and trusts that there will be life after Daft Punk for Guy Manuel de Homem-Christo. Guy Man is best known for performing variations on a theme, and a tired one at that (when was the last time you listened to Human After All?), but if he can successfully translate the wild ambitions of someone this eccentric, a promising production career beckons.
  • Tracklist
      01 Roche 02 Kilometer 03 Look 04 Divine 05 Pomme 06 Une Heure 07 Sexual Sportswear 08 Elle 09 Fingers of Steel 10 Manty 11 L’amour et la Violence
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