The St. Johns Meets the Seine on the Debut from Lonely Rose

The St. Johns River merges with the Seine on the debut from transcontinental group, Lonely Rose.

The track “Tonight is Yours (Ce soir est à toi)” from the group’s debut, French Love Songs, is a blues-meets-chanson hybrid which, according to band founder and lyricist William Sims, is the look into the mind of a heroine in a fugue of forlorn, or even imagined, romance. Featuring multi-instrumentalist Sims and French vocalist Clemence Bostnavaron, “Tonight is Yours” evokes enough classic ‘60s French-pop, chamber-music swoon and measured and romantic restraint to keep it from being lost in translation, or even worse, playing like Francophile kitsch. A weeping slide guitar over the kinetic ballad and Bostnavaron’s bona fide melancholic vocal style keep the whole affair in order.

Along with Sims and Bostnavaron, the Lonely Rose’s five-song release includes Duval musicians Philip Pan (five-string violin), Juan Rollan, (tenor sax) and Steve Strawley (trumpet), with Sims’ lyrics deftly translated to French by Yann Corbet. Since its February release, French Love Songs has found favor with Jacques Thevenet, President of JazzBox Radio International in Paris, and the EP is routinely played on Parisian radio.