Dion's latest goes au natural: French recording. Collaboration turns out an intimate work
Montreal Gazette
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Page: D1 / BREAK
Section: Arts & Life
Byline: JORDAN ZIVITZ
Source: The Gazette

She didn't have to do this. Celine Dion is queen of Las Vegas, and enjoyed typically mammoth sales from her two post-sabbatical anglo albums (2002's A New Day Has Come and One Heart, released in March 2003). She couldn't have recorded 1 fille et 4 types for money, so it must have been for love.

Love of her home territory, and love of her mother tongue. For all of her chatter about being the same humble Quebecois girl she always was - which got impossible to swallow after she renewed her wedding vows in the sacred presence of Vegas camels - Dion's first French-language disc in five years proves her connection to her roots by virtue of its very existence.

This is a concept album, but one based around the liner notes rather than a story line. Project mastermind Jean-Jacques Goldman, who worked with Dion on her albums D'eux (1995) and S'il suffisait d'aimer (1998), came up with the idea of a collaboration between Dion and noted French singer-songwriters; the three other types involved are Jacques Veneruso, Erick Benzi and guitarist Gildas Arzel. All four sing on the album.

Rather than coming off as a syndicate of Svengalis pulling Dion's strings, Goldman and company have given the singer the most sympathetic and intimate work of her career. Compared to the overbearing production of One Heart, 1 fille et 4 types is positively organic.

Organic is all relative, of course. Excepting the slide-guitar affectation in Ne bouge pas, Dion has no back-porch aspirations.

Everything is in its right place, with a glossy coating and a mushy centre. But there are fewer barriers between the song and the listener.

Presumably, Arzel was responsible for the more guitar-oriented arrangements. The only misfires in that department are the four-voice Des milliers de baisers - which builds to the kind of gassy, epic ballad that has put Dion's face on the dartboards of millions - and the thrusty Ne bouge pas, which should stand as definitive proof that Dion has never been and will never be a blues-rocker.

Lead single Tout l'or des hommes is another matter, showing Dion's potential for a moving vocal when she stops herniating and lets the song speak.

The Celtic-flavoured Je lui dirai was presumably written with petit prince Rene-Charles in mind, and is a much more fitting tribute to Dion's son than that grotesque family-bliss collage in the booklet for A New Day Has Come.

Dion has rarely sounded as sincere as she does here. Perhaps it's the production, or the above-average material. One ingredient is surely the return to the language of her youth in the midst of her engagement in a city that would corrupt anybody's innocence.

When she won a prize for English artist at the Quebec music industry's 1990 ADISQ awards gala, Dion made headlines by snubbing the honour and saying that she is not an anglo performer.

After yesterday's album release, that seems like a bit less of a publicity stunt. (Let's see if she refuses a similar award at this year's ADISQs on Oct. 26.)

1 fille et 4 types is in stores now.

jzivitz@thegazette.canwest.com

Celine Dion

1 fille et 4 types

Sony

Rating 3 1/2 (out of Rating 5 )

Illustration:
• Photo: JOHN LOCHER, AP / Celine Dion returns to the language of her youth on 1 fille et 4 types, her first French CD in five years.