By the time poet, singer-songwriter, and artist Lizzy Mercier Descloux
recorded 1984’s Zulu Rock, she’d marked herself out as both a globe trotter
with more passport stamps than Tintin and a musical innovator whose loose, arty
spirit could be applied to styles as varied as no wave, Bavarian oompa and
Soweto jive. She’d also established a tight-knit threesome
with muse/former lover Michel Esteban and producer/on-off lover Adam Kidron, who
all reunited to follow Zulu Rock – a surprise hit in her native France –
with something that, once again, represented a complete about-turn.