Outside her modelling career and relationships with Lenny Kravitz and Johnny Depp, Vanessa Paradis the singer is still best known (and affectionately remembered) in the UK for her hit at the age of 14, ‘Joe Le Taxi’. Across the channel, though, she’s a heavy hitter. Her last album, 2007’s Divine Idylle, sold 550,000, and Barclay/Universal were keen to ensure that the release of double album Love Songs, the follow-up which was produced with the assistance of Benjamin Biolay, would be a major event in France. 

Love Songs is an album of sharp retro-modern pop, with the stand-out being the single 'Love Song' (there’s more variety in the other song titles than that suggests) which features an English-language chorus, a throbbing sequenced bassline, a guitar riff that recalls Grace Jones’s ‘Pull Up to the Bumper’, strings, organ and even sirens. There’s also a duet with Carl Barât of The Libertines, ‘The Dark, It Comes’, one of a number of stunning ballads.