Hello and welcome to the Guide, written by me this week in Gwilym’s absence.
Today marks the release of the fourth album by French singer Christine and the Queens, AKA Héloïse Letissier. Back in 2014, Letissier’s debut LP, Chaleur Humaine (human warmth) marked the arrival of a playful alt-pop artist marked by their experimentalism both in terms of gender politics and an insouciant attitude towards French and English, floating effortlessly between the two and writing slick parallel versions of tracks which were more like siblings than twins. On his second album, released in 2018, came a more decidedly danceable sound, possibly the best ever use of a GarageBand preset, and a new persona, for whom the record was named: Chris.
Letissier is an artist who can both collaborate with Charli XCX on a pop banger and write excoriating songs about the futility of life itself. (I listened to Doesn’t Matter so many times during a particularly difficult period, along with the episode of Song Exploder where Letissier breaks apart every element of the song in minute detail, that I feel like the song is permanently lodged in my brain). I saw him perform the same show three times in the summer of 2019 (don’t ask), in support of the Chris album – once in France, once at Primavera Sound in Barcelona, once in London. Rather than endlessly diminishing returns, I got to witness a pop star at the peak of their powers, capable of completely hypnotising a crowd with Michael Jackson-esque dance moves and raw emotion.
If Redcar Les Adorables Étoiles, their 2022 album under the guise of another alter ego, seemed scattershot and somewhat inaccessible (Letissier recently told Vulture that it “got misunderstood, of course”), Paranoïa, Angels, True Love should act as something of a corrective. A 20-track, hour-and-a-half odyssey split over three CDs/vinyls for its physical release, it has the potential to completely overwhelm – the soundtrack for a film that doesn’t exist. But, really, there’s more than enough plot in Letissier’s life to provide context.
Letissier’s mother died in 2019, not long after they went through a bruising breakup. The track People, I’ve Been Sad from their Vita Nuova EP perfectly captures the sting of loss, and of “walking barefoot on glass”. And in 2021, Letissier came out as transgender, adding an extra layer of meaning to those early Christine tracks where he had been seemingly questioning gender as a concept, not necessarily questioning his own (on IT, he sang lines like “she wants to be a man, a man / But she lies / She wants to be born again, again / But she’ll lose”).
Fast forward to 2023, and Letissier loses nothing by being who he is, only growing as an artist. The singles from Paranoïa, Angels, True Love were striking, and the album – all 96 minutes of it – is at once understated and shot through with unbridled emotion (it was inspired by Tony Kushner’s epic play Angels in America, set in Aids-era New York). On disc one, A Day in the Water is sparse but heartbreaking with a hint of R&B and subtly pitched-up vocals, effectively as close to a Frank Ocean song as a Christine and the Queens song could be. Tears Can Be So Soft – built around a slight Marvin Gaye sample – is a dramatic ode to giving in to the pain of loss, propelled by a lo-fi, trip-hop sound.
Madonna (yes, Madonna!) appears on all three parts, a disembodied angelic voice who is in dialogue with Letissier, adding a starry quality but also co-signing his experimentation in the way that only someone who had the Ray of Light, William Orbit-era reinvention (and queer following) could do.
Yes, this is a big pop album, written almost entirely in English, and Mike Dean, who has worked with Beyoncé, Kanye and Lana Del Rey, is on production duty. Even so, it manages to feel intimate and authentic, Letissier’s talent for channelling chaleur humaine still shining through as brightly as ever, as he lets his tears run freely.
Paranoïa, Angels, True Love is out now; Christine and the Queens curates Meltdown festival at the Southbank Centre, London from today to 18 Jun
If you want to read the complete version of this newsletter please subscribe to receive The Guide in your inbox every Friday.
