Nouvelle Vague - Bande a part

What could be cooler than three cute girls singing bossa nova versions of '80s songs? The second release from Nouvelle Vague, Bande a Part (named for one of the French new waver Jean Luc Godard’s better films) opens with two hot covers: "The Killing Moon" (Echo and the Bunnymen) and "Ever Fallen In Love" (Buzzcocks). After this, things get a little mundane, with tiresome renditions of songs that weren’t that good to begin with. People with nostalgic ties to that era should enjoy the whole record, but others may lose patience with novelty songs such as “Human Fly” (The Cramps) and “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” (Bauhaus). French singers Melanie Pain and Marina are the reason to listen to the album. Their accents are so cute and they sing with an exhuberant sense of fun. Australia’s Phoebe Killdeer is comparatively flat, and Gerald Toto’s masculination of “Heart of Glass’ sounds like an out-take from Caetano Veloso's "A Foreign Sound," his 2004 collection of American cover songs. [www.myspace.com]