The French Kids Are Alright

Carrying on in the same vein as the last two songs I put up, here is some garagey female pop from France. Les Calamités seem almost a twin group to English Dolly Mixture as they shared the mod influence and both released their only album in 1984. Theirs was called A bride abbatue, and since then there have been several compilations - the latest being C'est complet from 1997, I think. All thanks to scoring a massive hit years after the album, with a single called "Vélomoteur", but they started out with punkier style not far from The Mo-Dettes, The Shop Assistants and Girls At Our Best!. Singing both in French and English, they covered e.g. "The Kids Are Alright" by The Who, The Troggs' "With a Girl Like You", The Choir's "It's Cold Outside" (I haven't heard that cover, though) and various girl group classics. Just like The Delmonas they tried their hand at "You Can't Sit Down", and it fact it's giving me a hard time deciding which version I like the best! One of their English songs, and most of the French ones were originals however, and they're top notch. One of them is the fabulously titled "Le supermarché" that you can get below. Each song on the album is near-perfect actually, making it the best record I've heard for a while. There is an extensive website about the band, that you can even read in English, over here.

CLOUD 37 Les Calamités - Le supermarché