GIG: COCOON

Think French folk and, more than likely, it will have something to do with accordions and violins, berets and beards, and sultry chanteuses belting out songs of heartbreak and seduction. But folk is undergoing somewhat of a revolution in France. A pop-folk of beautiful harmonies, acoustic guitars and even ukuleles, rooted in a tradition from across the Atlantic. A folk music taking France by storm, but sung in English. And riding the crest of this wave are Cocoon, a young singer-songwriter duo of Mark Daumail and Morgane Imbeaud, who take their cues from troubadours such as Nick Drake and Sufjan Stevens rather than the French folk of old. In the three years since they first met, 23-year-old Daumail and 20-year-old Imbeaud have not only won a raft of prizes but have earned a serious presence on air and in record sales with their wistful, dreamy, pure brand of acoustica. Daumail’s guitar and lyrics – at times melancholy and haunting and at other times breezy and whimsical – are brought together by the poignancy of Imbeaud’s keyboard and their incredibly melodic voices. Having already sold more than 20,000 copies of their first LP, My Friends All Died in a Plane Crash, since its release in October, Daumail says there was no special motivation for singing in English. “For us pop and folk music must be sung in this language,” he explains. “[It’s] almost unbelievable if we consider that just two or three years before, English songs written by French bands were almost forbidden to be played on the radio or TV. A lot of things have changed these last four years.” But despite the success of Cocoon, and fellow French pop-folk acts like Aaron, Hey Hey My My and Moriarty, this Anglophile revolution is still a tough gig in a country where a French-language quota is imposed on radio stations. “In my opinion, it is way better now but the situation of bands like us is still kind of fragile,” says Daumail.

Nov 27, Factory Theatre, 105 Victoria Road, Marickville, 8 pm, $60, cartellmusic.com.au