And then there’s what should have been their big world-beating hit. “Toi et Moi” is pop music so expertly constructed it sounds effortless, from its adorable little break of a beat to its glamorous synth strings to its hook of chiming bell. But it’s also ambivalent, happy-sad in mood yet lyrically self-interrogative, if not self-destructive. “Et je sens bien que je m’y prends mal,” Mény sings in an elegant lilt, “Que tout ça c’est pas normal/Que tu voudrais la version sous-titrée.” (“And I feel like I’m doing it wrong/That all this isn’t normal/That you would like the subtitled version.”) This is disco cultural criticism par excellence. If they’d made this song in English, and about a girl, Paradis might have risen like Phoenix.
Instead, they made their own minimalist magic. Grand opener “Instantané” and slick throbber “De semaine en semaine” likely both make earworms from the same crystalline keyboard, and the epic Balearic “Mieux que tout” might make arpeggiated blurs of it. In the seductive “Quand tu souris,” Mény pulls a blanket of electric piano around him as he murmurs, “We’d say easy things to each other… amused by the exercise in style.” In the chippy, 2-steppy closer “Chacun pour soi,” those blankets are thrown to the (dance)floor and disappear like plumes of smoke. The best tracks even use the same title. “Miroir (Un)” is unmoored by bass and paralyzed by long strands of synth echoes that sound exactly the way regret feels; “Miroir (Deux)” turns those strands into party streamers. “I’m looking even if it exhausts myself/For a song like a mirror in which I can see myself,” Mény sings in both songs. Part one is Camus fronting late-era Cocteau Twins; part two is Celeda and Danny Tenaglia realizing in real time that music is the answer to your problems. Paradis devised a formula of “what sounds good” and made it sound even better by being themselves. And so Recto Verso is also a triumph of personal taste, manifested in their almost mystical prowess with hooks, and embodied in a ritualized faith in repetition as enthusiastic emphasis, not resource draught.
Those songs were also bubbles in that when Paradis put too much pressure on them, they popped. “We were computer and bedroom musicians,” Mény laughed in Bible urbaine. The label wanted them to tour, to give in to that temptation to search for wider resonance, so they enlisted another keyboard player and live drummer. The rock-forward style made their relationship rocky. “We hadn’t imagined sharing our music in public like this; it was both very unsettling and fascinating,” Rosseau recently told Les Inrockuptibles. The pair began arguing. “By the end of the tour, things had become more complicated between us,” he said. Mény added, simply: “There was no music afterwards.”
Or, at least, no Paradis. Mény released a track or two over the next decade; Rousseau put out a pair of EPs and produced songs for Metronomy and Air’s Nicolas Godin. Recto Verso sank. And then, somehow, arose in the age of streaming. Paradis haven’t yet had their make-a-dance-to-this moment, or their big TV sync. Chanson sure as hell hasn’t been revived without them. “Toi et Moi” has been heard dozens of millions of times, if you believe Spotify. Je ne sais pas. Except that, once you’ve heard these songs, you’re going to want to hear them again. One moment, they’re not bad, and then they’re the best thing ever. A moment in the sun becomes a time you’ll never forget.
The album’s existential take on tasteful dancefloor pop succeeds so wildly, I think, because of its specificity. The future is local. Personal too: With its perfect packaging and lack of follow-up, Recto Verso is an immaculate cult object. Original pressings rose into the thousands of dollars on Discogs. And then, suddenly this summer, Paradis was regained. Like a message in a bottle, a 3xLP Recto Verso set washed up, containing almost everything the pair released. A love letter, maybe. Or a farewell. Only their remixes are missing, and only a new set of “Toi et Moi” remixes by Chicago house legend Mr. Fingers is promised. They extend the songs into nostalgia. Meanwhile, the reissue traps Montano’s photo, with all its emotional and erotic immediacy, within a thick frame of white. The flash is at a distance now, like an archive of pleasure’s potential. A holiday a long time ago when you danced to songs in French, without subtitles, with each other. Well, imagine that.
