Noel Gallagher's scissors player has a name and she's brilliant

Le Volume Courbe at New York's Roseland Ballroom, 9/22/08

In the aftermath of a recent Later with Jools Holland taping, avant-pop visionary Charlotte Marionneau has been thrust into the center of a dilated public eye. Her contribution as the scissors player for Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds has become a viral sensation, inspiring cheeky Facebook events and providing new fodder to the legendary feud between the Gallagher brothers. However, all the fanfare has inexplicably neglected to mention the brilliant body of work on which she stands, let alone her name. As such, Square Cotton Candy is more than happy to fill in some of the gaps left by other rags.

A recent addition to the former Oasis songwriter and Celebrity Deathmatch contender’s ensemble, French expat Marionneau has spent many years cementing her own legacy as frontwoman and main creative force behind London based group Le Volume Courbe.  Their sound colors outside of the lines drawn by a deep pool of influences ranging from Nico to Cornelius, blending strings, electronics, and acoustic guitar accompaniment in such a way that evokes images of bustling downtown streets and snowy rural expanses within a span of minutes.

In the nearly two decades of their existence, Le Volume Courbe has gone through various iterations featuring such notable talents as Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval, The Clientele’s Mel Draisey, as well as My Bloody Valentine’s Colm O’Ciossig and Kevin Shields. The endorsement from the latter arguably served to expand Le Volume Courbe’s audience more effectively than EMI’s lukewarm distribution of their 2005 debut LP I Killed My Best Friend ever did. Indeed, the disc more or less became a cutout bin rarity by the time they were tapped to support My Bloody Valentine on their first American voyage of the 21^st century back in 2008.

For all of her brilliance, however, Marionneau isn’t exactly the most prolific auteur. Though a cover of folk standard Freight Train made it to vinyl via UK label Trouble Records in 2007, behind the scenes shuffling resulted in considerable delays for the follow-up Theodaurus Rex EP. Initially cancelled by Trouble and finally released in 2011 via Pickpocket Records (a joint venture between Shields and Marrioneau), the EP essentially served as a teaser for the group’s sophomore LP, 2015’s I Wish Dee Dee Ramone Was HereWith Me.

For their second album cycle, US distribution was picked up by LA based Ring the Alarm Records, though Marionneau and company have yet to cross the pond again. Still, with all of the praise he’s given, perhaps Gallagher will see fit to invite the rest of Team Courbe to open for his High Flying Birds during their upcoming stateside trek. This is most probably just wishful thinking, but for all of the attention Marionneau is getting as the “scissor sister”, this opportunity for her following to grow would be a terrible shame to waste on failing to mention her name.