Comme si de rien n'etait - Carla Bruni

2007's No Promises, made before Carla Bruni became Mrs Sarkozy, was a surprisingly good album considering it's concept. A French-Italian super model setting music to 11 classic poems, including works by the likes of WB Yeats, Emily Dickinson, WH Auden and Dorothy Parker...who wouldn't want to avoid that like the plague?

But here we are, 12 months down the line and Bruni has done it again. Only the one song is in English this time, You Belong To Me, and this proves to be a wise move. The bubbly Je Suis Une Enfant is one highlight, the breathy and sophisticated sound of Le Temps Perdu is another. But in reality there's not really much on the album that you wouldn't want to listen to again and again.

But there is no way that Comme si de rien n'etait can be seen in any other context that being by the wife of the French president, if only to consider the sheer horror of Cherie Blair trying the same after her attempt at a Beatles song in the far east that time. Few will probably care about any political context if we're being honest, unless they are a broadsheet music critic with an agenda, and tackling the album from this perspective does it a disservice. On it's own merits, away from the context of Bruni's very public private life, you can accept it for what it is - another surprisingly good album that will delight and charm you in equal measures.