KEY POINTS:
Carla Bruni is easy to scoff at for all the wrong reasons. She's an Italian-French ex-supermodel who once dated Mick Jagger. But she's also an exotic vocalist with a Marianne Faithful purr and songs as mysterious and understated as her sense of style. You almost wish there was a catch.
Well, good news. This being her first English-speaking album, she didn't strain to write the lyrics - she turned classic poems by the likes of Emily Dickinson, Wystan Hugh Auden and Christina Georgina Rosseti to song.
On one hand this imbues her music with a gorgeous, untouchable quality; on the other it reaffirms Bruni as untouchable herself, a husky-voiced nymph who won't reveal herself in her music. You can just picture her in a white cotton dress playing some truckie-filled dive in middle America, breathing knowingly into the mic, then sauntering out as soon as her set is done.
Her band is a little more accessible. Don't be fooled by the Jack Johnson-styled rendering of a W.B. Yeats piece; these are otherwise breezy, folk-pop songs that combine the aesthetic of Nashville's Lambchop with her French chanteuse background. Perhaps it's her exotic vocal, but Bruni somehow gets away with what could have sounded contrived. Rebecca Barry
Label: Filter/Shock
Verdict: Don't hate her just because she's beautiful
