Christine and the Queens, the brainchild of London-based French drag-queen performer Heloise Letissier (a female at birth), debuted with EPs such as Misericorde (2011), containing the anthemic Kiss my Crass and the Patti Smith-esque manifesto Twist of Fate,
Mac Abbey (2012), containing her signature song Cripple (re-released as both Christine and Tilted) and the dance ballad Narcissus Is Back,
and Nuit 17 a 52 (2013), with the more conventional funk-soul dance The Loving Cup and the much more conventional ballad Nuit 17 a 52.
The single Saint Claude (2014) completed the transformation into pop diva
before the hit album Chaleur Humaine (2014), which gathers some EP songs and some new songs: notably, the obnoxious ballad Saint Claude, the timid Paradis Perdus and and especially the disco singalong Science Fiction.
The four-song EP Intranquillite' (2015) recycled olf songs and added Intranquillite'.
After the mediocre Chris (2018), containing his signature song Damn Dis-moi/ Girlfriend (generic moronic dance-pop), the solemn aria La Marcheuse/ The Walker and 5 Dols/ 5 Dollars, and after collaborating with Charli XCX on Gone (2019), including a famously sexy video,
Heloise/Chris became Redcar, a male, and released the six-song EP La Vita Nuova (2020), still credited to Christine and the Queens, with People I've Been Sad (slow, late-night lounge ballad), and I Disappear in Your Arms, reminiscent of erotic synth-pop of the 1980s; not only amateurish but also dated.
Things improved slightly on the concept album
Redcar les Adorables Etolles (Prologue) (2022),
produced by Mike Dean (Kanye West, Drake, Weeknd, Beyonce, Madonna),
certainly not with the single Je te Vois Enfin, but with
Rien Dire and especially the eight-minute Combien de Temps,
both of which
combine atmosphere and melody in a more charming manner.
Therefore, the mesmerizing 96-minute triple-disc Paranoia Angels True Love (2023) came as a surprise.
Inspired by Tony Kushner’s play "Angels in America - A Gay Fantasia on National Themes" and co-composed and produced by Mike Dean in collaboration with other songwriters and arrangers, it is another concept album, centered upon the death of Letissier's mother in 2019.
There is moody synth-pop, like To Be Honest and
We have to be Friends
(both produced by Dean with Ash Workman), but mostly
this is a collection of sophisticated and elegant chamber lieder in search of the purest melody,
from the ethereal blues lament Tears can be so Soft (produced by Dean and Sarah Schachner), fueled by a sample of Marvin Gaye's Feel All My Love Inside, to the
touching True Love (featuring Danielle "070 Shake" Balbuena, produced by Dean and Schachner), from
the ghostly claustrophobic dirge He's Been Shining for Ever Your Son
to the piano-based pensive ballad Marvin Descending (a collaboration with Ash Workman and Joseph Bishara, besides Dean),
culminating with the slight Shine (over a bed of hi-hats, bass rumbling and sparse synth lines).
In these songs her crooning achieves the an almost religious grandeur, her
reverbed vocals working as a gospel choir.
Madonna shows up for
the ridiculous Angels Crying in My Bed,
but also for two tortured psychodramas
composed by Darren King and Joseph Bishara, namely
I Met an Angel and Lick the Light Out, both emotional zeniths of the opera.
Much of the credit goes to Dean and his team, whose calculated soundscapes enrich
Letissier epos.
Dean and Tommy Rush even arrange the erotic Full of Life with Pachelbel's famous canon in D.
The best melody surfaces at the very end, in the slow, majestic, quasi-psychedelic crescendo of the eight-minute Big Eye (another Dean-Bishara-King creation).
And finally there's the eleven-minute hypnotic and melodramatic melismatic rambling of Track 10, whose melody is built out of Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Lucky Man.
Suddenly, Chris Letissier has become one of the best singers around.
