Jusqu'À La Lumière

Description

Drinking songs, from Miossec to The Pogues, have always brought dizziness, tears, and laughter to rock music. In country music, it was in Texas, fueled by moonshine, lost women, and faithful steeds, that the most poignant of these songs were written, without mincing words, with a hangover. Baptiste W. Hamon, born near Paris, adopted these legends of cracked men, contemplating the desert with disastrous moonshine in their flask, in his adolescence. During one of his rare visits to France, Townes Van Zandt dipped his croissants in a large glass of Jack Daniel’s. How can one not see in this insane clash of French and American traditions the definitive metaphor for Baptiste W. Hamon’s uprooted music? Crossing voices with strong personalities like the American Will Oldham on L'Insouciance (2016), then the Breton Christophe Miossec on Soleil Bleu (2019) strongly resembles a declaration of faith. After this sad alcohol, after the playful intoxication of the album Barbaghamon (2021) recorded with Toulousain Barbagallo, the time for cheerful alcohol has arrived. English producer John Parish shares with Baptiste a taste for great journeys and musical mood swings. Parish has produced some of the Frenchman’s cult albums: Dominique A, Sparklehorse, Aldous Harding, Giant Sand, and of course PJ Harvey. Baptiste wanted a refined side to the arrangements of the songs, something classy, sober, with the continuous presence of a pedal-steel that John sometimes managed to make sound like an atmospheric synth. This music is not at all stuck in traditions and the past. It is of its time. Even innovative when Baptiste reclaims an old song like the exalted "Revoilà le Soleil" by the rebellious Anjou native Jacques Bertin, which he makes his own, à la Calexico, in this eternal concern for transmission. He ignores geographical and stylistic boundaries, inviting the singer Ane Brun, from Norway where Baptiste lived for two years, for a solemn and sensual duet. Baptiste W. Hamon did not always listen to country music; he started with Belle & Sebastian, Nick Drake, and Elliott Smith. And from the incisive lyrics of French songs from the 50s and 60s, Brel foremost among them, he retained a taste for purity and, paradoxically, for lyricism. He does not hesitate to tell swaying stories with humor ("Dorothée"), or to gravely describe daily scenes ("Ils Fument"). In the same song, tender words and scathing phrases mingle, lyrics and music clash ("Boire un Coup", "Les Gens Trompés"). Because while punchlines abound, the melodies or the magnificent sound are never neglected. A strange album, at once maximalist in the images, the short films it suggests, and minimalist in the sound engineering, the staging. What do the fundamental differences in decorum matter: these are the same bruised stories told on both sides of the Atlantic.