LE VOLUME COURBE’S
I WISH DEE DEE RAMONE WAS HERE WITH ME OUT NOW ON RING THE ALARM |
French singer and producer Le Volume Courbe’s new album I Wish Dee Dee Ramone Was Here With Me is out now on Ring The Alarm/Pickpocket Records. Get it here.
NPR Music recently premiered the video for “Rusty,” watch it here.
Recorded by Le Volume Courbe frontwoman and creative force Charlotte Marionneau, the album is part solo effort and part collaborative project with Marionneau’s longtime band members Melanie Draisey, Chris Mackin, Lascelle Gordon, Theodore Hall, Wildcat Will and Barney Slater. I Wish Dee Dee Ramone Was Here With Me also features My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields on guitar on Roky Erickson cover “I Love The Living You” and the album’s title track as well as shooting a toy gun on “The House.” Martin Duffy of Felt and Primal Scream plays piano on “Monte Dans Mon Ambulance.” Marionneau also covers Nico’s “Le Petit Chevalier” alongside her own original compositions.
The new album comes ten years after Le Volume Courbe’s debut, I Killed My Best Friend, was released on Astralwerks in the U.S. and Honest Jon’s in the U.K.
“Now I understand why second albums are ‘difficult,’” Marionneau says of recording the new album. “Your first album is your ‘best of; the music you’ve made all your life; then you start again from scratch. I’m not prolific, but I need an album to be strong throughout. I have to build it like a collage; I feel more like a producer than a musician really. So I pick up ideas and create songs around them. It’s about trying things, experimenting.”
Marionneau grew up in a small town in Pays de la Loire in northwest France before moving to London in 1995. Encouraged and inspired by friends including Shields, Duffy, Hope Sandoval, David Roback and Colm O’Ciosoig, she recorded I Killed My Best Friend. In 2007 Marionneau joined forces with her band and the Theodaurus Rex EP followed in 2011. I Wish Dee Dee Ramone Was Here With Me is the culmination of that EP featuring those four songs plus seven new tracks. Le Volume Courbe has toured widely, including dates in Europe with My Bloody Valentine, and has been featured in TV and film soundtracks the world over. Marionneau’s cover of Nina Simone’s “Ain’t Got No…I Got Life” is played regularly on French radio. Ten years have passed since the first Le Volume Courbe release, but Marionneau's songs, once heard, are not easily forgotten.