L’Oiseau Magnifique

The charm of Alice's second album, L’Oiseau Magnifique (The Magnificent Bird), lies in its simplicity. The songs are performed by mother and daughter Lisa and Yvonne Harder with graphic novelist Sarah André, their three voices accompanied by lo-fi synth and body percussion.

The album is delightful — the songs have a spontaneous feel, tinged with a folky energy and a playful quirkiness to the vocals that are both captivating and comical; the trio's inviting harmonies are front and centre, the instrumentation sparse and uncluttered. Composed in French, L’Oiseau Magnifique is a work of storytelling, taking you out of your daily routine and into a strange, magical world that toes the line between tongue-in-cheek humour and philosophy. Lyrical gems such as ‘No one can multiply fish like Jesus Christ, but I wonder if Jesus was funny,’ or ‘two children wake up one morning and they are no longer children’ are thought-provoking without taking themselves too seriously. Not the sort of music to get stuck in your head, the album is more of an audio performance piece, falling somewhere between a podcast and nursery rhymes for adults that will have you reflecting on life's absurdities, and smiling as you do.