No Promises

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Adapting a bunch of highbrow poets for her first English-language album might seem an act of hubris for Carla Bruni, who usually sings in French. However, the aristocratic Italian has pulled it off with polylingual panache. WB Yeats' Those Dancing Days Are Gone becomes a joyous, acoustic guitar-driven gem with a wonderfully lackadaisical vocal and an irresistible chorus where Bruni announces, “I carry the sun in a golden cup, the moon in a silver bag”. Also by Yeats, Before The World Was Made sees producer/collaborator Louis Bertignac add Atlantic soul-style guitar to a stately arrangement as Bruni sings, "I'm looking for the face I had before the world was made". Next up, WH Auden's Lady Weeping At The Crossroads is a musical fairy tale, the darkness of the words offset by a delicate mandolin and Bruni's dreamy vocal.

The floodgates are open now, with Bruni and Bertignac's musical alchemy in full swing – not so much turning base metal into gold as turning gold into… even more gold. Emily Dickinson's I Felt My Life With Both Hands is a country-blues-pop hybrid, while Christina Rosetti's Promises Like Pie-Crust is a magical nursery rhyme that seems pregnant with arcane wisdom. The rockiest moment here is If You Were Coming In The Fall (Dickinson again), but the production is so beautifully judged that at one point it actually allows us to hear Bruni clearing her throat. After adaptations of Walter De La Mare and Dorothy Parker, No Promises ends with Auden's At Last The Secret Is Out. With plaintive guitar and murmured vocal, it sums up the album perfectly. Dark lyrical territory for sure, but Bruni's irrepressible joie de vivre makes this learning experience an entirely pleasurable one.