Dig those Flairs, man!

THWACK! That’s the sound of gauntlet being thrown, as the first great French album of 2009 gets in the ring and starts picking fights.

 

Flairs is the nom de rock of Lionel Flairs, itself a name which is just too good to not be a pseudonym. Mr Flairs divides his time between London and Paris, making rather deadly electro-pop in both cities. Some Flairs tracks have been doing the web-rounds since last year, and now he’s gathered ten of them into an album that already has us planning for our end-of-year Best French Music list.

 

It’s called ‘Sweat Symphony’ and the cover (right) features Lionel and his unflattering armpits. This is clearly a deliberate strategy to keep all the unpleasantness on the outside of the record, thus maximising the fabness inside. Funky, catchy, dancefloor-friendly electro-pop that’ll have you grinning and grinding and – yes – perspiring, ‘Sweat Symphony’ is joyous stuff.

 

Our favourite track? Well, for its statement of intent as much as its poptasticness, it’d have to be ‘Better Than Prince’. Better than Prince 1989-2009? Well that’s easy, seeing as the man hasn’t released a decent single in over twenty years. Better than Prince 1982-1987? Now that’s a big claim, but much of ‘Sweat Symphony’ stands up respectably to the purple genius’s golden age.

 

You can judge for yourself. Listen to tracks from ‘Sweat Symphony’ on Flairs’ MySpace page, and watch the video for ‘Better Than Prince’. (It was made by Jonas and François, responsible for the clever T-shirt video for ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ by Justice.) But quit picking on small fellas, Mr Flairs: