An all-star memorial album for Souris the cat is the latest project from French artist Sophie Calle
Name: Souris the cat.
Age : Dead since 2014. Appearance : Immortal.
Hey, where’s my trigger cautioning for scary ghost cats? Relax. Souris isn’t literally immortal, but he has nevertheless been memorialised in spectacular manner.
OK, where’s my trigger warning for taxidermy? It’s not that, either. An album has only just released about his life, entitled Souris Calle, that’s all.
So, where’s my trigger advising for morbidly atonal teenage home-recorded grief meditations ? You misunderstand. The album isn’t in the news because it exists. It’s in the news because it features just about every single guest superstar you can think of.
Go on then, impress me. Pharrell is on the album. So are the National. So is Laurie Anderson and Jarvis Cocker and Jean-Michel Jarre, and Michael Stipe.
Yes, but where’s Bono ? He’s on the album, too. He’s on the first way, Message to Souris, in fact. He reads a lyric that goes:” All at once, as if awakened/ She turns her face to yours/ And with a shock you see yourself/ Tiny, inside the golden amber of her eyeballs “.
Right. Listen, it gets better. Jeanne Cherhal offer a beautiful piano-led song called Sans Ma Souris. Brigitte offers the woozy waltz Souriais-tu La ?, while Stipe’s Souris Nocturne is a wordless lament. Cocker’s A Cat Called Souris, in contrast, is delivered in a full-blown Gainsbourg whisper.
Sorry, but I merely like demise metal. Then allow me to point you to the track Tactical Reborn by Linus Ohrn. It is, as you may have guessed, a 62 -second death metal song. About a dead cat.
What’s so special about this dead cat, anyway? Perhaps you should ask yourself what’s so special about his owned. Souris belonged to Sophie Calle, a conceptual artist famed in her native France for the highly personal nature of her run. Prior to this, she was most famous for The Address Book( 1983 ), in which she contacted and interviewed everyone listed in an address book she found on the street.
OK. There was also Room With a View( 2002 ), in which she slept on a bed at the top of the Eiffel Tower and invited members of the public to read her bedtime stories. And Take Care of Yourself( 2007) where she invited 107 females, including a parrot and a puppet, to interpret a break-up email she had just received.
This is all very confusing. Don’t be confused. Despite the sad nature of the material, Souris Calle is possibly her most accessible work yet. It’s a really lovely album.
No arty tricks at all ? No. Except ” Souris” is French for “mouse”, so yes.
Do say: ” What a gorgeous style to treat the deaths among a beloved pet .”
Don’t say :” I usually merely flush mine down the bog .”
Read more: www.theguardian.com