no.no.no.no.no. i’m sorry, this is the second negative review in a row, but i honestly cannot recommend any more tiersen. or rather i can, but i cannot recommend buying the albums. let me explain.
there are definitively some gems on the two cds that arrived yesterday from amazon.fr (le phare & l’absente). unfortunately they are burried under a lot of crap (pardon my french) and do not give sufficient reason for buying the full albums. most of the songs really sound like cheap pop songs (and probably are). i can understand that work very well in the context of a movie soundtrack, but they do not have much value on their own
i am sorry, because i really wanted this to work out, but i’m afraid amélie is tiersen’s best work (out of these three albums at least).
to end on a good note, if you’d like some good french soundtracks, i can wholeheartedly recommend gabriel yared’s 37° le matin (betty blue in english) and eric serra’s le grand bleu (the big blue in english)