SOLINE

Orléans, Loiret · based in Paris since 19 · b. 2004 · FARA Records

SOLINE (Soline Vasseur, b. 27 June 2004, Orléans, Loiret, based in Paris since nineteen) grew up an hour and ten minutes south of Paris on a good train — exactly close enough to know what she was missing. A calm, handsome, slightly self-satisfied cathedral city on the Loire with very little going on and a great many teenagers aware of it; she was one of them, loud, sociable and restless, organising everything and leaving as soon as she could. She isn't remotely tortured about any of it and says the boredom was useful, which is a more honest account than most people give of a provincial upbringing. She found her way in singing over other people's tracks at parties from about fifteen — not a training, but it turned out to be one: she learned to find a topline over a record she'd never heard, in a loud room, in real time. She moved to Paris at nineteen with no plan and spent two years on other people's club records before this one.

Bright, forward and rhythmically exact. She sings in French daily and in English on record with a light accent she's stopped trying to remove, which suits this music — the French touch tradition has always sung in English with an accent, and it's part of the pleasure. Her real skill is phrase-shaping: she knows precisely how many syllables a hook can carry before it stops being chantable, and she writes to that limit rather than to a melody. No melisma, no runs, and considerable power kept in reserve for the last chorus. Her influences run the French club-vocal tradition where a voice is a hook delivery system rather than a showcase; disco toplines heard second-hand through the records that filtered them; and, less obviously, chant — she thinks about a chorus the way a crowd would rather than the way a singer would.

The visible half by mutual agreement — genuinely warm, very fast, and completely unbothered about being looked at. She does the interviews, works the room and enjoys it, with no performance of reluctance about any of it. Live she's out front and moving while VERMEIL stays behind the desk in the dark, which is exactly how they both want it. She counts syllables out loud when she writes and will cut a better line for a shorter one. She's stopped trying to lose the accent on English lyrics and points out that the entire genre was built by people who didn't lose theirs either. Warm, decisive, quick.