La Chanson du Parasite

Ok, so I basically stumbled upon the new album Ottocento by Lyon-based band Ödland. They're an interesting if slightly ridiculous 19th-century music project by Lorenzo Papace. I never managed to hear their music when in France, but I was an avid listener of their epic lyrics.

It is amusing that the French people I knew thought them to be horrendously kitsch, probably because the band manages to evoke the grandest clichés and stereotypes about 19th century Bohemian French culture (of which I am not a grand connoisseur), let alone the fact that their lyrics must stand vis-à-vis the grand writers such as Baudelaire, Verlaine or Rimbaud, and which they probably don't.

I'll let you judge yourself. La Chanson du Parasite is a good start, combining exploratory sojourns of entomology and French charm.

LA CHANSON DU PARASITE

Avant j'étais si seule
si vous saviez
abandonnée
j'étais au bord
de me donner la mort

et puis un jour
il est arrivé
mon grand amour
mon bien aimé

j'ai fait
sa connaissance
de façon
rigolote

en trouvant
un petit bout de lui
dans ma culotte

ça chatouillait
fallait faire vite
j'ai embrassé
mon parasite

mon parasite et moi
c'est une histoire
qui n'existe
que dans les livres

on se comprend
on se taquine
c'est un tenya
et je lui cuisine
de bons petits plats.