Six years after his last solo album 'Who's Happy ?' and two years after collaborating on the tribute to Dr John project 'Night Trippin'' as a duo with guitarist Matthis Pascaud, one of the finest voices in jazz and rock is back with his new album « Good Grief». Hugh Coltman, two-time winner of the Victoire de la Musique Jazz, returns with a very beautiful rock/blues album of new compositions accompanied by a band of great musicians.In his sixth album, Hugh Coltman wrestles with his shadows. Grief, fatherhood, midlife crisis and the vertigo of the times: the rock crooner with the so British accent doesn't cheat. Adorned with jazz, folk and blues, his devilishly poetic songs touch you right in the heart. And what if the crisis was a good thing?« Writing that stuff freed me » reveals Hugh Coltman. An album of crisis, Good Grief? Yes, but far from being totally dark. There is resilience and love in these songs delivered at the turn of his forties, the desire to embrace his fragilities as a man and father, as if Hugh were mourning his former « self », the one who thought he was Roger Daltrey of The Who belting out blues-rock riffs. « Rather than chasing a character I'm no longer, » he says, « the idea was to fight and accept. Where would that take me? Where could I find something positive? All of that helped me put my finger on certain things I wanted to convey in these songs, mainly for myself, but also to help others ».The first thing you hear in Good Grief is Hugh Coltman's wonderful voice, deep in time, his exquisite vibrato, his sense of drama and, of course, that irresistible accent.With one foot in England and the other in America, Hugh admits to having leaned as much on Nick Drake as on early Blake Mills. And ultimately the inspiration was there, lurking in the pages of a notebook, spewed out by the keyboard warriors behind their screens (« Keyboard Warriors »), vomited up by the world's inhumanity, like that sadly famous photo of Aylan, the Syrian refugee child in the red t-shirt found dead on a beach in Turkey (« Red T-Shirt »). On this world, his and ours, Hugh Coltman casts a thoughtful eye, whether empathetic, sharp or disillusioned, far in any case from the go-getter he once was. In the meantime, he has found the answer to the question he was asking himself: why make another record? Well, for all those reasons, and one last one, perhaps the most important: « Because I enjoy it ».
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