Stella Vander - Stella (Expanded Edition) (2015)

Stella was France’s anti-yé-yé girl. A Parisian schoolgirl, she was the agent provocateur who lampooned jolly pop girl Sheila, lamented that France was in thrall to American archetypes, reconfigured Bob Dylan and satirised weekend trendies. This expanded edition, first-ever reissue of the only album Stella issued in the Sixties irresistibly captures all facets of who she was before she abandoned pop to begin working with the jazz-influenced band Magma in the 1970s, whose Christian Vander she would marry. France had never heard anything like her. She laid the table for the raspberry-blowing musical cheek of Jacques Dutronc and echoed Serge Gainsbourg’s raised eyebrows. Her records were fantastic – pop art-style cut-ups, inside-out psychedelia, wonky soul and rough-edged garage rock. Stella took on French pop and made it her own.