Heart-Headed

Description

Liset Alea is about to release her first album, which she has conceived, written, and composed herself. She is the ideal singer, a backing vocalist, a multi-instrumentalist, bassist, and guitarist, exceptionally talented at serving the projects of others (Nouvelle Vague, Alexkid, Yasmine Hamdan, Elodie Frégé), who has long hidden a raw and sensual composer and performer within her, driven by all the intoxicating offerings of music. "Heart-Headed" is the album of a woman who sees herself guided by the heart but retains within her that part of the "Heart-Headed woman" that Wanda Jackson sang about in the early days of rock 'n' roll. Liset Alea writes and composes with her feelings but also with real expertise. Her voice, reminiscent of Paula Frazer, even the Marianne Faithfull of "Bored by Dreams," or a Cuban Lana Del Rey, is complemented by the string and flute arrangements of Jérémie Poirier and the synths of Marc Collin, polished in the expansive mix of Bénédicte Schmitt, creating a voluptuous setting. The drums, played by Raphael Chassin, Seb Brun, or Alban Claudin (who also plays keyboards), but especially the guitars played by Jan Pham Huu Tri, Stefane Goldman, and Liset herself, add a touch of lived experience and exile to the whole. With "Heart-Headed," Liset entrusts her most personal work to fate. A bit too talented, a bit too beautiful, in love like a child telling herself stories - "Asphalt Flowers" - you have to see her perform her songs live, forgetting the weight of all these charms in the emotion and surrender of the moment. "Lo que es tuyo, nadie te lo quita" (what life has in store for you, no one can take it from you) says a Spanish proverb she loves to quote: the die is cast, her future belongs to her.