Marianne Dissard's songs are about falling apart and coming together, but not necessarily in that order. Her second album, L'Entredeux, was reportedly written during the break-up of her marriage to fellow Tucson musician Naïm Amor and certainly deals with desires relieved and thwarted, commitments betrayed, relationships redefined. That Dissard sings in French only makes her subject matter seem more precarious and interiorized, as if she is keeping listeners at a safe distance even as her low, smoky chanteuse vocals draw them closer. Born in France but based in Arizona, the singer-songwriter-filmmaker writes as if she must constantly take stock of a relationship, sorting through memories both good and bad. She thanks him for "hot tea and a weather report" on "Merci de Rien du Tout", then adds "thanks for nothing." On "Les Confettis" she toasts "to my handkerchiefs, to your laziness... all our hopes in pieces by night" in a one-woman ticker-tape parade for dashed dreams. Finally, "Indiana Song" delivers harsh closure: "It's over," she sings, her voice quavering only slightly. "We won't save our skins no more."
L'Entredeux may be Dissard's Rumors or Shoot Out the Lights , but the album sounds idiosyncratic: a coming-together of European musical traditions and American sounds. This is chanson adapted to the American southwest; of course Joey Burns produced the album. Dissard may be best known for dueting with him on "The Ballad of Cable Hogue", from the Calexico's Hot Rail, and he returns the favor by giving L'Entredeux an arid luster, full of soundtrack strings, curious accordion, and John Convertino's rumbling, shuffling drums (few drummers have a sound as immediately recognizable as Convertino). Long-time Willie Nelson cohort Mickey Raphael lends high-desert harmonica to "Sans-Façon", and Amor himself even adds snappy guitar licks to "L'Embellie" and ""Ce Visage-Là". Burns' Wurlitzer turns "Les Confettis" into a dark carnival, then ends "Merci de Rien du Tout" with a lengthy sound collage outro pasted together with pieces of a sampled French lesson.
At its best, L'Entredeux sounds lively and expansive, an idiosyncratic view of French and southwestern musics; at other times it sounds a bit too much like Calexico. But generally Burns keeps the arrangements textured enough to be interesting but not intrusive: a mere backdrop to reinforce Dissard's endeavors of intimacy. With the crisp phrasing of Françoise Hardy and the bluesy tone of Chan Marshall, Dissard holds the album together bravely. Unless you undestand French, you may not apprehend the narrative specifics of the garage-rocking "Trop Expres" or the slow-burning "Cayenne", but she easily and naturally communicates each song's strange mix of strong desires and overwhelming regrets.
