Songs for summer days and nights

I first got to know Philippe Auclair, a Frenchman living in London since 1986, as someone who wrote about football in both French and English with rigour, authority and elegance. His biographies of two celebrated fellow exiles, Eric Cantona and Thierry Henry, are unlikely to be bettered. The elegance I mentioned is the quality he brings to his other career as a musician, using the alias Louis Philippe.

The latest album by Louis Philippe & the Night Mail, The Road to the Sea, is a beauty. I’ve always known of his love for Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, and that his past collaborators have included Sean O’Hagan of the High Lamas and Stuart Moxham of Young Marble Giants, which gives some idea of his orientation. So we have sunshine pop, chanson, a hint of the baroque (maybe with a nod to the Left Banke), and open ears in general, perhaps with a bit of Francis Lai and Paddy McAloon thrown in, but also with a strong enough personality to ensure freshness.

The strain of Beach Boys influence I get here is the period taking in Smiley Smile, Wild Honey and Friends, post-surf and mingling hippie serenity with a barely perceptible hint of unease. This isn’t retro music in any way — there are modern trimmings throughout, used sparingly — but Auclair’s carefully wrought arrangements sometimes throw in an unexpected tone or texture, like the sudden appearance of a Hammond organ on “Watching Your Sun Go Down”, a theremin effect on “All at Sea” and a melodica on “Always”.

Unfashionably, he writes chromatic melodies, like the shapely “Song for Paddy (Wings of Desire)”. Overall there’s a lightness of spirit that might represent the influence of Brazil, although perhaps I’m thinking that because I’m listening to “Where Did We Go Wrong”, which races along to a rapid samba rhythm.

His singing voice is calm and unaffected, sometimes rising effectively to the falsetto register; he could be the late Carl Wilson’s French penfriend. There are three songs in his native language, of which “Le Baiser” might well be the loveliest new song I’ll hear this year, with delicious, heartlifting background harmonies and an insouciant jazz piano playout. For sheer beauty, it’s almost matched by one of the English songs, “A Friend”.

The sun and the sea feature prominently in the lyrics, along with a feeling of life drifting along, as it can tend to do. As the days lengthen and June approaches, this is my album for summer days and summer nights.

* The Road to the Sea by Louis Philippe & the Night Train is released on the Tapete Records label: http://www.tapeterecords.com