France’s Yé-Yé girls were known
for singing—or often speak-singing—coquettish or girlish lollipop pop and
looking cute. Pussy Cat would have none of that. Her stage name was the only
cutesy pie thing about Évelyne
Courtois, a serious rocker who sang and played
guitar in France’s first all-female band, Les Petites Souris, and later drummed
in Les Pussy Cat. Moving outside of that band while taking along its name for
herself, Pussy Cat performed tough-ass, modish rock and pop, appropriately
debuting with a version of “Sha La La La Lee” (“Ce N’Est Pas Une Vie”) that
doesn’t hold back any of Small Faces’ bottom-heavy bash. Her attitudinal
singing has none of Bardot’s disaffected meow. Stand back when her rage boils
over on an electrifying cover of Betty Everett’s “You’re No Good” (“Mais
Pourquoi…”).
Having also cut tracks by and popularized by
The Hollies, The Moody Blues, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Ballroom, and
Herman’s Hermits (okay…she does have her odd cutesy moment), Pussy Cat eventually
distinguished herself as a good songwriter in her own right in the late sixties,
though by that point she’d shed a lot of her Rock & Roll hellfire and went
in more of an emotive ballad direction. Nevertheless, her rock and pop roots
were still very detectable, as when she stole a bit of The Ronettes’ “Walking
in the Rain” for “Cette Nuit” or did a pretty good version of The Zombies’
“She’s Not There”.
RPM Records’ Boof! The Complete Pussy Cat: 1966-1969 collects all of Pussy Cat’s
sides for her first anthology released outside of France. A couple of
unreleased cuts and four Les Petites Souris sides that reveal Courtois had been
penning her own material as early as 1965 complete a revelatory portrait of one
of France’s most legit rockers.
