Revue Noir – The Revue Noir Single

Dark cabaretesque music has become in vogue since the Dresden Dolls. Perhaps Revue Noir is jumping on that bandwagon, but that’s no grave concern, because this type of music stands in a long tradition, from Kurt Weill to Nico. Somewhere between moody pop, rock, cabaret and singer-songwriters.
Typical for Revue Noir are the smokey, low vocals of Nicki Jaine, who also plays piano and guitar. I would not call her singing beautiful, but she has a personal, emotional style. Sam Rosenthal (Black Tape for a Blue Girl) takes care of a subtle electronic background, with further musicians adding a tasteful accompiment of drums, violins, cello and theremin.
The three songs on this first mini cd make up for interesting listening music with a lot of feeling and atmosphere. The songs have something of a lazy, sensual cabaret style. Songs which tell stories, like the morbid ‘The gravediggers’ or the personal confessions of ‘A girl, a smoke’. There’s also a nice song situated in Amsterdam, though when it comes to music about the Dutch capital, I prefer Jacques Brel’s song by far. Nevertheless Revue Noir shows quite some potential on this first offering.