Everybody Was in the French Resistance...Now!

At first you might mistake the name of this new band featuring Art Brut singer Eddie Argos for a joke about French collaboration under the Nazis (a Broadway musical adaptation of The Sorrow and the Pity?). But the concept here is more car-game playful and inane: Conceived on a road trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco by the deadpan Londoner and pianist-backup vocalist Dyan Valdes of L.A.'s the Blood Arm, Fixin' the Charts, Vol. 1 is an album of answer tracks to famous pop songs — replying to Avril Lavigne's relationship-wrecking "Girlfriend," for instance, with the upbeat but concerned "G.I.R.L.F.R.E.N. (You Know I've Got A)." So the tune with the title chorus is an oblique response to "Creeque Alley" by the Mamas and the Papas. Really, it's all an excuse to hear Argos in a new pop argot, namely a pale version of the Magnetic Fields that makes us miss the shapely guitar riffs of Art Brut. But he's compelling enough to see live in whatever happens to sweep him up.