Album Review: Christine & The Queens - Chris

If Heloise Letissier's debut (as Christine & The Queens) Chaleur Humaine danced with subtlety, inviting curious people into her sexually fluid world where simply being called 'bi' or even 'pansexual' seems painfully limiting, Chris is intentionally more muscular, more intense, but no less diminished by lazy labelling.

Musically, it's like a chilled synthpop spritzer that effervesces from her remarkable debut. Vocally, Letissier remains assuredly feminine, but the sensuality has roughened with the metamorphosis of Christine to Chris - expressing a confidence and unapologetic sexual bravado usually reserved by red-blooded male performers. Damn (What Must A Woman Do) lays out the lust in the same breath as spitting on a sleeping young man whose bed she's leaving. Chris is as much about fucking, loving, and getting lost in the chase for a cisgender heterosexual as it is for someone whose place is not so easily defined.

In making this album, Letissier allegedly became obsessed with the 1991 documentary In Bed With Madonna, a taboo-filled spectacle that is a logical touchstone here. How wondrous it would be to see Chris personified with such grand-scale staging.