Lina

Everybody knows we die for French pop. From all ages, from Françoise Hardy to Dominique A. And, despite we think the current situation of pop made in France is more than satisfactory, we’ve always toyed with the idea of enjoying a today’s reencarnation of our favourite French female singers. You know, a new France Gall, or a Lio for this new century. We thought our dream would never come true... till we listened to Lina.

Lina is a girl from Paris who owns her own shop in a flea market near the Seine, a shop specialized in sixties, colourful extravagant clothes, something she really loves. Though Lina’s favourite thing is singing. Singing colourful, swinging pop songs.

Lina started to sing lead vocals in bands when she was at high school; later on she was part of outfits such as BURIAL PARTY, LES CORPS CAVERNEUX, LES PICORETTES or LES JEUNESSES MABOULES. Till she met a bass player and composer called Yves Calvez, well known in France for his collaborations with Arnold Turboust, the author of some of the hits of France’s ultrapop megastar Etienne Daho.

Arnold and Yves wrote a bunch of songs for Lina, the ones which conformed her first solo album “Dans cinq minutes j’suis prete!” -“I’ll be ready in five minutes!”- released by Sony in several countries. Songs in the album were mainly pop, very influenced by the sixties girlie stuff but at the same time avoiding the “retro” tag thanks to their arrangements and sound, timeless and exquisite. It featured an excellent rendition in French of Nancy Sinatra’s oldie but goldie “Sugartown”.

In the summer of 2001 Elefant Records puts out the Spanish release of Lina’s second album. It’s called “Redevenir modeste” -“Becoming humble again”. Again the music is composed, programmed and producted by Yves Calvez and Arnold Turboust.

As it happened with her first album, the sound of Lina combines the best features of pop made in the last four decades. Sixties pop is still the core of all, specially because of how the songs are constructed: very well-structured songs with shiny, catchy melodies, all of them boasting an absolutely perfect chorus, one of those that sticks to your head and you can’t help humming for weeks.

If Phil Spector made records today they would sound quite close to this “Redevenir modeste”

Elefant discography:
ER-1068 “Redevenir modeste” CD 2001

Other releases:
“Dans cinq minutes j’suis prete!” CD Sony .