Benjamin Biolay, "Rendez-vous Qui Sait" (2007)

The lovely "Rendez-vous Qui Sait," a track from Trash Yéyé, the forthcoming album by the freshly-divorced Benjamin Biolay, makes me think of three or four other songs, and almost all the memories are pleasant.

It begins with a tinkling piano part that runs through the whole track; on the pre-chorus, the riff doesn't stop, but it does shift downwards a half-key. But if the song therefore sounds a bit like something Coldplay might produce, this specter is more than countered when the chorus rolls around and a beautiful trumpet comes in. The notes it plays are not quite from "Join Our Club," but there's a gorgeous whiff of Saint Etienne in the air. (It reminds me even more of The Cherry Orchard's "Roundabout," but no one will get that reference.) Since my mind is wandering anyway, and since Biolay often gets lined up next to his fellow countryman Etienne Daho, I'm also prompted by the trumpet to think about "La Baie" -- perhaps one of my favorite songs ever -- even though "Rendez-vous Qui Sait" is jauntier, less achingly sad than Daho's track. Not that "Rendez-Vous" is without its tinge of melancholy: on the chorus, Biolay begins to doubletrack his vocals. Everything comes together at that point -- the rueful voices, the lonely trumpet, the never-look-back piano, and even the synth hits that go plapt plapt plapt -- and, though it seems strange to say, the ghosts of all the other songs feel like they are simultaneously summoned and exorcized.