[Easterling either has a new album out (release date described variously as “Spring 2015” and “Summer 2015”), or it’s on its way: in either case, the title is Common Law Wife. Maybe coincidentally, most of her recent publicity photos feature her standing outside, in profile, wearing a plain white dress, shift, or slip — as though to suggest a wedding. I like the black veil, though.]
This isn’t the first time I’ve featured a song from Angela Easterling’s 2012 French-language album, Mon Secret. (That would have been in a post from a couple-three years ago.)
But I have been listening a lot to this song for the past couple months. The title translates, she says, to “A corner for us,” and there’s indeed something comforting, sheltering, enwrapping — nookish — about the experience of listening to it…
…even when you can’t understand French (as I can’t).
As in that earlier post, I depend wholly on the lyrics Easterling provided with the album. They were co-written by her and a friend, a native of France and university instructor of the French language, and I’m in no position to judge either the translation or Easterling’s pronunciation. I just know it sounds lovely, right, wrong, inappropriately interpreted or otherwise. From the accompanying and soloing string instrument — what is that, anyhow? a mandolin? a dulcimer, or steel guitar? — to the lilt of Easterling’s voice, this song, well, soothes.
[Lyrics]Edit to add [2015-03-26]: After I posted this piece, I heard (via Twitter) from Angela Easterling herself — who advised me that “Un coin à nous” wasn’t truly original for the Mon Secret album. It had first appeared on her 2011 disc, Beguiler, as a song called “Pocket”… in English.
The lyrics to “Pocket” closely track the English translation of “Un coin à nous,” with one notable exception, right there in the line which provides the title:
Let’s go… The whole world is just us two. Let go.
There’s no one here but me and you…
Our little pocket in the corner of the night…
Where the shadow of the light is blue.
“Pocket’s” music has a bit less of the dreamy Continental feel of “Un coin à nous,” or maybe I’m just imagining I here more of a twang in the original. Either way, the song is a standout.
Here’s “Pocket”: