La balade sauvage

Description

La Balade Sauvage is the 7th album by Nicolas Paugam. Composed of 11 new songs, it follows "La Délicatesse," a soft and weightless album, and could be its disheveled twin opposing its counterpart by the vital necessity of not resembling it. It prominently features electric guitars, marking the grand return of acoustic drums and layered arrangements. This style, already developed in Mon Agitation (2015) or Le ventre et l'estomac (2019), is here rehashed, cannibalized in an album that proudly waves the banner of unrestrained French song. In this masterful work, his influences range from Tropical Fuck Storm to Jimi Hendrix, from Tom Zé to Os Mutantes, including the Francophone Louis-jean Cormier and the eternal Georges Brassens, here covered in a very bluesy version of Bécassine. The writing is often poetico-political-sarcastic, as in "ce paradis terrestre et poulailler gris," which confronts the life of luxury in St Tropez with the misery in Calais. And what can be said about the biting song "dans ton thé," which mockingly observes colonial England?