One Track Mind

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With their self-titled debut in 2004, Nouvelle Vague established themselves as the coolest cover band on the planet. Led by Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux’s breezy arrangements and supercharged by a menagerie of breathy female vocalists, the band gave a bossa nova meets jet-set musique treatment to tracks from late 1970s and ’80s favorites from artists including PiL, The Undertones, Joy Division, The Cure, and Josef K. The song selections on their debut and their follow-up, 2006′s Bande à Part, were a satisfying mix of underground hits and more obscure cuts, all of which were breathed new life by the band’s distinctive interpretive style. October 20th will see the release of NV3, the latest batch of covers, including takes on songs by Echo and the Bunnymen, The Sex Pistols, Plastic Bertrand, Talking Heads, and Gary Numan.

As their take on Depeche Mode’s classic “Master and Servant” illustrates, gone are the purely Brazil-meets-France treatments, supplanted instead by nods toward the classic American sounds of bluegrass and country music. Also new to this album are guest duets by members of the original artists, hence Martin Gore’s inimitable, bassy notes during the iconic chorus. Melanie Pain handles the lead vocals throughout, putting a nice spin on the track’s obvious sado-masochistic subject matter and lending the affair a coy sexiness. Musically, this approach may not be as compelling as the group’s earlier, more bossa nova influenced versions, but pianos and mouth harp add some nice color to the simple, shuffling beat. For fans of either band–Nouvelle Vague and Depeche Mode–there is much to enjoy here, even on the most basic level of hearing such a synthesizer driven track revised with such an organic, acoustic feel.