“I am a very nostalgic person,” says Savoir Faire in the press release for Hopeless Nostalgic, her first full-length album. “Indeed, hopelessly so, at times. I have to remind myself not to live in the past, whether it’s my past or the comforting allure of music, fashion, etc., from times past. That nostalgia feels very conflicted because when you peel back the layers of those times, you reveal very imperfect and problematic eras. Memory can be very deceiving.”
Listening to Hopeless Nostalgic, one gets the impression that Savoir Faire (real name: Sarah Fard) positively revels in nostalgia due to the jazz-noir leanings of the music. But the lyrics often address modern problems, and when she does dive lyrically into the past, it’s often from the standpoint of a millennial as opposed to someone raised in the Jazz Age (she’s said on her Instagram page that the album is “for a lot of people, but at its core, it’s for my fellow 1990s kids”).
Take the opener, “Curtains Up”, where Fard’s guitar meshes beautifully with Flora Curzon’s achingly beautiful strings before Andrew Moreau’s understated bass and Dave Brophy’s drums come in. “Take me back to ’93 / When I heard because we could doesn’t mean we should,” she sings, and name-checks Alanis Morissette, Jewel, Joan Osborne, and even sneaks in a covert No Doubt reference: “Before things get bombastic, drastic, we’ll call it cinematic / The kingdom’s gotten tragic, has it? / Lost its kind of magic.”
A few of these songs were previously released as standalone singles, and four were part of a 2022 EP, Think Twice. However, hearing all these tracks assembled in one beautifully arranged package is an exquisite treat. While the overall vibe seems dark, torch song-inspired, the music often moves delightfully and subtly through different genres.
“Alias” shifts back and forth between simmering, sultry verses and rougher, crunchier choruses reminiscent of 1990s shoegaze. Furthermore, “Machine with a Dream” incorporates a modern pulse of a beat and Fard’s typically deft guitar work to create a sort of contemporary interpretation of an old, classic style (her day job as a music educator should come as no surprise to anyone who hears the sophistication and grace that move fluidly through Hopeless Nostalgic’s ten gorgeous songs).
Elsewhere, the Iranian-American artist addresses the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement on “Only Fools (Betarseed)”. With the aid of composer Via Mardot, who’s credited with mellotron, marxophone, theremin, and tubular bells on the track, the song imagines – according to the press release: “What if a torch singer wanted to join the Riot grrrl movement instead of serving the male gaze?”
The defiant chorus drives home the point: “Only fools believe that they’ve got us under their thumbs / Convince themselves that they have won.” That defiance continues on songs like “Sweet,” which challenges the outdated conventions of female complacency (and also features a delicious, jazzy, atonal guitar solo): “I lift weights with my condolences / My biceps of that moral shit / I got ten tons of sensitive / And I don’t think you can handle it.”
Hopeless Nostalgic concludes with the musically retro-leaning title track, and the accompanying music video – with its visual references to artists like Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, and the Wallflowers – does a great job of bridging Fard’s inspirational reference points and the lyrical subject matter of nostalgia. “I’m a hopeless nostalgic,” she sings. “Melancholy, velour, and flannel / Let my heart get snagged on lives that I’ve had / In this heart of mine, there’s a loose panel / That lets in the hopeless nostalgic.”
It was tempting for me to describe this album as “jazz noir for millennials”, but that unfairly limits its appeal. This is music for all ages and generations, made with skill and panache, eyes looking back with longing and forward with hope.