CD review: Chantal Chamandy - Love Needs You

Chantal Chamandy - Love Needs You
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Born in Egypt and living in Montreal, Chantal Chamandy's Love Needs You album is an exquisite and tasteful recording of pop music. Given a chance, there's nothing stopping Chantal from becoming a global pop star.



The album starts off with the anthemic and catchy "Zindegi," followed by the single "You Want Me." The rich sound of Chantal's music is a result of both Middle Eastern influences as well as a host of real musicians playing electric and acoustic violins, carnatic violins, saxophones, trumpets, guitars and tablas, to name a few. The exotic flavour of the album is also as a result that she sings a few lines here and there in French, Arabic, Italian and Spanish. It's works to add to the mood that you're listening to a bona fide international star. Being a tasteful recording, however, she doesn't overdue it on the exotic instrumentation.

The ballad Feels Like Love showcases Chantal's stellar vocals and is a duet with Chico Castillo. Other tracks that I liked a lot include "Salma Ya Salma,", "Music on the Moon" and "Peace,", which reminded me of the light, piano driven music of Moby.

Chantal wrote and produced the all the songs and it's on her own label. Occasionally, she sounds like she's holding back her vocal performance. It should be more front and centre and prominent. Will listeners find Chantal Chamandy to be an exciting and distinctive voice in pop music or will she fail to break away from the multitudes of other promising new artists, many of whom are indistinguishable from one another? As far as I can tell, she's almost unknown in Canada. Her challenge is to play some dates and to prove herself in a live setting.



Watch the UK interview with Chantal from Chatshow.net.

My rating is 4/5.