CHRISTINE & THE QUEENS - La Vita Nuova 12"

Label: Because Music

French singer-songwriter Héloïse Adelaïde Letissier a.k.a. Christine and The Queens’ newest release ‘La Vita Nuova’ borrows its name from a Latin text by Dante Alighieri, which tells the story of his love for a woman named Beatrice and details the emotional toll of her early death. Christine and The Queens’ reimagining is also a melancholy-tinged love letter, though in her own response she trades the permanence of a lover’s death for the gap left by one who leaves in a sudden blaze and never returns.

Ever since her debut album ‘Chaleur Humaine’, Christine and The Queens has exploited careful shifts in language and meaning. Here she also exploits the tradition of a classic – and heteronormative – courtly love narrative, before twisting it to new ends.

Christine and The Queens has continually proven that she has a gift for injecting emotional heft into the vessel of warped, left-field pop. Conceptually, ‘La Vita Nuova’ is an astonishing feat – but even better than that, it also oozes an intensity of feeling that punches right in the gut.