Sexe Fort
This time out, the French diva's husky voice sounds far more lived-in, mature, passionate, and vehement than ever before. It's safe to say that her previous albums only gave an inkling of her true capabilities. Yes, the arrangements are frequently overblown and bombastic; that hasn't changed but somehow it doesn't matter because this singer has finally come into her own. Like her glamorous predecessors,DamiaandEdith Piaf(the context may be different but the baton has been claimed), she has an uncanny ability to flatten the listener with vulnerability, to attract by going too far, to make sophistication appear naive and born of the moment. Perhaps this is part of her native culture's flair for rendering artifice so seductive that it becomes an end in itself, but it's also true that few cabaret traditions can approach how the French describe the raw, heedless depths of sexual obsession. --Christina Roden