Danse encore

Description

Dance again: it is a refusal of stillness and breathlessness. The title of Clarika’s ninth album conveys a gesture of stubbornness, a desire, the wish to stay in motion. Dance again, even if the ground shakes. Without restraint, dance above the general anxiety and the little troubles. Dance with familiar figures, and new ones. Make our loved ones waltz and recognize their poetry, even simple, even unnoticed. Dance again also means, for the singer, not settling into the comfortable ease offered by thirty years of career. It means continuing, yes, but marking the break: for this album and for the first time, Clarika wrote and composed. It is new, and had never before been for her a matter of necessity. Until now, she had preferred to surround herself with trusted composers (Jean-Jacques Nyssen, Fred Pallem...), from whom she drew proud collaborations. It came almost out of nowhere: from an attempt, the desire, then the frenzy, the excitement, the joy of learning and creating with new weapons. It was suddenly opening breaches in the known universe. This intoxication, this uncertain risk, wavering and furiously free. Clarika dances again, suspended above the void. The lyrics have something of this, a persistence in chaos. “Ce soir je sors” is an impertinent act of defiance in the midst of what is collapsing. The words draw from a constellation of images, a mix of observations and intimate evocations, sometimes dreamlike, sometimes blunt. Her pen continues to be rooted in this kind of playful sharpness. She has fun like that, brushing against insolence in “Seule la mort” and insulting her beloved abandoned cigarette in “Adieu salope” - composed by Fred Pallem.