Chantal Claret, ‘Bite Your Tongue’ – Free MP3 Download

Don’t be fooled by those strips of adorable photo booth portraits staring out at you from the cover of her ‘The One, The Only…’ album — Chantal Claret can be a tough cookie when she wants to be. And in that case, consider ‘Bite Your Tongue,’ the disc’s first single, to be a modern day doo-wop ditty about how that cookie named Claret doesn’t crumble in the face of a–holery.

Claret, best known as former frontwoman of disbanded outfit Morningwood, leaves that band’s alt-rock sound behind and explores a whole new decade of decadence with ‘Bite Your Tongue,’ a scorching torch song in the tradition of ’60s soul, big band and Phil Spector’s legendary Wall of Sound. Think Adele meets Amy Winehouse, and you are halfway there.

But when it comes to the lyrics, that’s where Claret shows her true grit. Turning in an indie rock version of Carly Simon’s immortally mysterious ‘You’re So Vain,’ she aims the tune’s vitriol squarely at somebody famous — she’s just apparently not in the mood to name names. “You’d know who this song was about if I told you and you’d probably agree that they are an a–hole,” Claret tells Diffuser.fm. “But it can be applied to any a–hole pootalker in your life, believe me.”

A quick run-through of Claret’s public enemies list reveals that there is no list of public enemies, so we’ll stop the guessing game there and just enjoy ‘Bite Your Tongue’ for the soul-fueled pop nugget that it is.