Carla Bruni - No Promises
(Dramatico)

"Cor, this foreign bird's got a way with words", you think, as Mme Bruni-Sarkozy wraps her breathily seductive tones around the line "I carry the sun in a golden cup, the moon in a silver bag" on the opening track of her first album in the English language. Released in January, No Promises has topped the European chart, and amid the clamour of Madame and Monsieur's presidential visit, its dozen songs offer a potential goldmine of insights into the French First Couple.

However, once you've managed to stop looking at the aspirational front cover (Bruni kneeling over a book in a small cotton dress), a leaf through the booklet reveals that these aren't Carla's words, but those of W.B. Yeats.

In fact, all of Carla's songs on No Promises take their lyrics from English language poets, Emily Dickinson, W.H. Auden and Christina Rossetti among them. So she's well-read, and pretty tasteful too - though anyone hoping for tell-all revelations about Nicolas' nocturnal habits will be frustrated. But then good French girls, or Italian-born ex-models who happen to have bagged the French president, never reveal this kind of stuff anyway.

What No Promises does reveal is that Bruni has a pretty, lambent, peculiarly accented voice that occasionally recalls Brigitte Bardot's. Her own gently plucked guitar melodies are hazily effective. The vibe is not a million miles away from Madeleine Peyroux, or the Icelandic singer Emiliana Torrini. Not for nothing has Bruni sold close to a million records in Europe. Only a genuinely revolting harmonica solo, springing like paparrazzo out of nowhere, troubles the calm.

There is a more honourable history to models turning into singers than you might think. Grace Jones and Nico are the ones to aim for, though it's hard to picture Carla winding up a dead junkie like Nico (not impossible), or making music halfway as interesting.

In truth, No Promises has no higher ambition than being a superior dinner party soundtrack, and this it acheives with elegance and savoir-faire. But then what did you expect from the French President's wife?