Au revoir chagrin

Description

In imagining this seventh album, but his first for the AT(h)OME label, Da Silva has wiped the slate clean of his (more or less) recent past. For this record, which he briefly considered recording in Cuba, he chose as a guiding principle to have none. He mainly dreamed "of chaos, of disorder," wanting to reconnect with those early dizzying moments, trying to be as unprofessional as possible, becoming a beginner again "who does a bit of anything." But who ends up doing it well – and that is the essence – thanks to a carefree writing style, and a certain negligence that sometimes leads to excellence. "Au revoir chagrin" reveals ten songs (and here, this is not a phrase to be taken lightly) with strong personalities. Songs that flirt with pop ("S'agapò"), reggae ("Le Garçon"), waltz ("Rien"), and take on a Brazilian accent ("Loin") or mariachi ("À l'endroit de la douleur"). Songs where one believes they can glimpse the silhouettes of Tom Waits, Jean-Louis Murat, and Brigitte Fontaine, where the spirit of the Saravah label seems to have slipped into the silences, where we encounter Sylvie Hoarau from Brigitte or Hakim Hamadouche, a close associate of the late Rachid Taha. More in love than ever with this freedom that clings to him like the tattoos he cherishes, Da Silva has taken his responsibilities to imagine an exotic and mixed album, an invitation to a musical and melodic journey "far from the world" as we know it today. A journey for which we will settle for a one-way ticket.