Rosenvinge, Christina / Foreign Land

Smells Like Records

With the release of Spanish-Danish chanteuse Christina Rosenvinge's sophomore Smells Like Records album, one has to wonder why more Latin American superstars don't trade in tedious fame for rewarding cult careers as singer-songwriters. She recorded in New York City at Echo Canyon and The Magic Shop, and again enlisted Steve Shelley, Lee Ranaldo, and Tim Foljahn, with added bass playing and arranging courtesy of Jeremy Wilms, guitar and voice of Smokey Hormel (Beck, Tom Waits, Smokey and Miho), and her first collaboration with the Soldier String Quartet (who have provided for luminaries ranging from John Cale to Guided by Voices), giving things a nouvelle vague flavor, recalling pre-electronic German music or Nordic pop, all tied together with some good old clanging New York experimentation.  Soaked in sweet melancholy, "King Size" and "Submission" (equal parts Gainsbourg and the VU), should become classic cuts, as should conceptual experiments such as the claustrophobic "German Heart" (imagine Neubauten fronted by Brigitte Fontaine), which stretches itself into a sharp lamento. Other surprises await in "Dream Room", with its angelic girlie choir drowned in a dark undersea cave, and "Off Screen", which could've been culled from an unfilmed Truffaut screenplay. Rosenvinge's lyrics deliver intelligent confessions with the starkness of Marguerite Duras, both sweet and sour, ironic, elegant, meticulous, brittle and inspired. They seem to come from a personal, mysterious world of concise romanticism peopled with kindred spirits such as Françoise Hardy, Stina Nordenstam and Nico.  TRACK LISTING 1. Off Screen 2. 36 3. King Size 4. Dream Room 5. Submission 6. Lost in D 7. German Heart 8. As The Stranger Talks   • Follow-up to the 2001 success Frozen Pool • Studio band includes Smokey Hormel, Steve Shelley, Lee Ranaldo, Tim Foljahn • Sweet yet sad

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