I had somehow come into contact with Roy Music, the label of the Paris band Jil Is Lucky, through booking gigs around Europe. The label manager put on a few gig nights in the City of Lights, and often prescribed peculiar English names (with a feline slant) to attract a fashionable crowd (e.g. Cute as a Cat and We Are the Lions). A while after a brief email exchange with the mysteriously omnipresent club promoter and label manager, I received a blank postcard to my home address with an image of a man in a pair of sunglasses flanked by four religious leaders dressed in colourful spandex (which would be the album cover shown here, but without the band title). A few weeks later, the début album from Jil Is Lucky appeared in my postbox.
This charming record is a heady mix of styles, religions, instruments and peculiar prose. Jil Bensénior, leader of Jil Is Lucky, sings entirely in English throughout the self-titled début, sparking interest in whether the strange lyrics are mistranslations or in perfect keeping with the troubadour nature of the album. Either way, I couldn’t help but be endeared to Jil Is Lucky. The 12 tracks are jam-packed with many musical styles and sociological issues (tackling chanson, ska-punk, folk, and post-rock as well as tipping the hat to Christianity, Judaism and Islam in three separate songs), culminating in a grand listening experience. The second track from Jil Is Lucky, J.E.S.U.S. Said, takes a look at what Jesus said:
Jil Is Lucky – J.E.S.U.S. Said
The lovely folk at Roy Music have made a live version of the 10-minute final track, Hovering Machine, available for free download.
Jil Is Lucky garnered great success in France when this album was released in 2009, buoyed by a silly video for their single The Wanderer. A new album is in the works, which, if I’m lucky, will mean a mysterious blank postcard full of priests and rabbis to pique my interest before the next dose of Jil’s wacky melodies.