Ilo Veyou is a record that's as intriguing in material as it is in moniker, Camille possessedly repeating "la plus belle planète" on opener Aujourd'hui as if desperately attempting to convince herself that our little old planet called home is the best place for her quirky personality and periodically otherworldly voice. For categorising the chanteuse's voice is perhaps the most perplexing element of assessing this effort: from the Disney-ish chirruping of Bubble Lady (two minutes that sound a little like a Fairy liquid ad) to the Feist-like swoon of She Was, a lack of refined definition appears to define the record. Similarly the mood swings whimsically, like a swing boat barely capable of clinging onto its pivotal axis: Mars Is No Fun, with its lyrics of Christmas postcards and Milton Keynes shopping centres sounds somewhere along the lines of Ólöf Arnalds covering Wham!'s Last Christmas, while Le berger sounds like a Medieval ode recently unearthed in moss-coated woodland, still in pristine, glimmering nick. Elsewhere, the mad hat peculiarity of Allez allez allez, an orchestral jig infused with frenzied yells of "ça suffit" and frantic gasps regarding "les polycopiés" sounds as though penned in hallucinatory, panic-stricken throes, while La France, dripping in the gaiety of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, recalls Édith Piaf starring in a new maniacal Lloyd Webber production in the surrounds of Toad Hall.
At other points, Camille's attentions turn to the ribald and lewd: on Wet Boy her inconceivably graceful, gushing vox drownout contemplations of lyrics such as "seek between my thies [sic] a hidden fall / sink and swallow", while Pleasure is equally suggestive if more candidly expressed, her musing on the dichotomy between pain and pleasure embossed by its a capella nature. Ilo Veyou further accentuates Camille's status as a rather otherworldly songstress, one barely perturbed by our earthly concerns and while she may be suited to residence on the surface of a different "planète", France seems to suit her given the avant-garde effortlessness of this long-player as it breezes by with utmost insouciance.
