Jusqu'à la lumière

Description

Drinking songs, from Miossec to the Pogues, have always brought vertigo, tears, and laughter to rock. In country music, it's in Texas, with moonshine, lost women, and faithful steeds, that the most sensitive of them have been written, without beating around the bush, with a hangover. Baptiste W. Hamon, born near Paris, adopted these legends of weathered men contemplating the desert, a disastrous spirit in his canteen, during his teenage years. During one of his rare visits to France, Townes Van Zandt dipped his croissants in a large glass of Jack Daniel’s. How, in this insane collision of French and American traditions, can we not see the definitive metaphor of Baptiste W. Hamon's uprooted music? Collaborating with strong personalities like the American Will Oldham on L'Insouciance (2016), and then the Breton Christophe Miossec on Soleil Bleu (2019) feels very much like a declaration of faith. After this sad alcohol, after the mischievous intoxication of the album Barbaghamon (2021) recorded with the Toulousain Barbagallo, the time for cheerful alcohol has come. English producer John Parish shares with Baptiste a taste for great journeys and musical mood swings. Parish has produced some of the French artist's cult albums: Dominique A, Sparklehorse, Aldous Harding, Giant Sand, and of course PJ Harvey. Baptiste wanted a clean aspect in the arrangement of the songs, something classy and sober, with the continuous presence of a pedal steel that John sometimes manages to make sound like an atmospheric synth. This music is not at all frozen in traditions and the past. It is of its time. It feels innovative when Baptiste appropriates an old song like the exalted "Revoilà le Soleil" by the rebellious Angers native Jacques Bertin, which he makes his own, in a Calexico style, with this eternal concern for transmission. He ignores geographical and stylistic boundaries, inviting the singer Ane Brun, from the Norway where Baptiste lived for two years, for a solemn and sensual duet. Baptiste W. Hamon has indeed not always listened to country music; he started with Belle & Sebastian, Nick Drake, and Elliott Smith. From the sharp lyrics of French songs from the 50s and 60s, with Brel at the forefront, he has retained a taste for simplicity and, paradoxically, for lyricism. He does not hesitate to tell swaying stories with humor ("Dorothée"), to describe everyday scenes with gravity ("Ils Fument"). In the same song, tender words and biting phrases intertwine, lyrics and music clash ("Boire un Coup", "Les Gens Trompés"). For while punchlines abound, the melodies and the magnificent sound are never neglected. A strange record, both maximalist in the images and the little films it suggests, and minimalist in its sound and staging. Regardless of the fundamental differences in decorum, these are the same battered stories told on both sides of the Atlantic.