Bossa Super Nova

Bossa Super Nova was described upon its release as being the last Antena album of three which, given the two-decade-plus break between the first two, might be seen as a bit of a career acceleration. But Isabelle Antena has always been happily content to follow her muse either on her own or in group mode, and Bossa Super Nova — her second collaboration with her daughter Penelope under the group name, following 2006's Toujours du Soleil — is an easygoing treat of a release, another instance of the understated Brazilian pop grooves that Antena has always openly loved coming to the fore in her own inspired way. With further collaborative help musically and lyrically from a childhood friend of Isabelle's, Jean-Christophe Clair, Antena approached Bossa Super Nova in much the same way that Depeche Mode did with the previous year's Sounds of the Universe, intentionally taking technology and equipment from the band's earliest days to re-explore them for a different songwriting and arrangement approach. So instead of the heavily shrouded-in-reverb stylings of Camino del Sol, the early drum machines and keyboards here stand out much more crisply, while Antena's vocals similarly are of her as the accomplished and experienced performer rather than the young enthusiast out to see what might work. Songs like the insect-buzz-tinged "Happy in My Garden" aim for the sweetly dreamy, while "Straight to the Point," a giddy celebration of Serge Gainsbourg, becomes a frug-worthy acid rock confection suitable for the French legend in the late-'60s. The combination of science fiction bliss ("Amour Cosmique," "Une Francaise sur Mars") and reflective nostalgia ("Hollywood Is Dead," a lament for lost stars of the past) makes for yet another excellent Antena album.