Owlle - France

***1/2

Owlle, not as head spinning as hoped

Owlle is a female French musician and in a novel move has titled here debut album ‘France’ as a nod to her heritage. The music itself has a nod to a few of her compatriots too with it being mostly Electronic based syncing with the nations recent famous exports of Daft Punk and Air. This is certainly more in line with the latter though still has the retro feel of the masked ones too. Owlle is a lot more of a stripped back sound though than either of her previously mentioned French cousins with her music more rooted in British 80’s Synth Pop than anything else.

Initially it felt to me that opening track ‘Fog’ has a bit of Eurthymics feel to it feeding off that sound in the same way that La Roux, more French references must be something about keyboards over the channel, have recently.  ‘Don’t Lose It’ and ‘Creed’ offer the more quirky Pop sound of the album and have a certain amount of dance floor appeal about them. But there is also the darker slower burner on their too such as ’Your Eyes’ and ‘Silence’ that should appeal to fans of The XX with a similar use of the stripped back keyboard sound.  

Being a solo artist the vocals are always going to be important and here is the real strength, in tracks like ‘Ticky, Ticky’ it could almost be an artist in a Parisian café. There are lots of good moments to this album but overall for me it never quite explores the ideas enough. It could be a slow burner and I will come back to it but the initial impression is that it never quite takes off as an album. Certainly one for fans of the genre and those acts I have mentioned that do similar, but not currently convinced by the wider appeal. 

Listen! to the Track 'Creed' Below...