In his new album, “Métèque”, the singer interprets appropriates Moustaki titles, Brassens, Bourvil, Trenet, Reggiani … sometimes touching, sometimes annoying.
Marketed at the end of November 2019, Renaud’s previous album, the kids and children first, brought together twelve songs evocative of the childhood theme (the playground at school, nightmares, friends at the cinema , nonsense, Guignol show…). All with a booklet drawn by ZEP, creator of the character of Titeuf. Renaud’s personal nostalgia in which everyone could find themselves. Here is a metèque, another dive into memories, this time those of thirteen songs created and interpreted by others, which “rocked my childhood, my adolescence and a little more”, specifies Renaud in the press release which accompanies the exit from The album, Friday May 6. His tribute to the heritage, therefore.
At the opening, the metic, of Georges Moustaki, is not a good omen. In a slightly heavy rock treatment, rope and wind orchestrations that crush lightness, the nonchalance of the Moustaki melody. Fortunately, arranger Michel Cœuriot is more inspired for the future. In particular with it goes, from Boby Lapointe, which remains close to the fantasy of the original; Night and fog, by Jean Ferrat, who takes up the orchestral magnitude movement; La Folle Complaint, by Charles Trenet, in New Orleans Blues trip – Reminder on the part of Jazz by Trenet – or La Tendresse, de Bourvil. And with Bonhomme, by Georges Brassens, whom Renaud had already praised in an entire album of twenty times, in 1996, the contrast with the minimalism of Brassens is well conducted.
So many songs where Renaud’s voice, long -damaged by too many cigarettes, too much alcohol, manages to touch. Elsewhere, it is difficult to hang on an audible lack of energy – even if we do not expect a Renaud that he has the power of a lyrical tenor -, to the absence of curves in the interpretation, to A tenuous vocal breath. The metics thus suffers doubly.
With the friendship, by Françoise Hardy, without having any particular attention for the singer, what her song becomes by Renaud is annoying. Ditto for David McNeil’s Hollywood, 1972 success of the American singer arrived in France at his young age. No more convincing, if you pay me a drink, written by Bernard Dimy, composed by singer Cris Carol, that Serge Reggiani made his own in 1975 and forever. To take perhaps as a Renaud’s desire to confront his demons.
And two tunes are really struggling in the interpretation of Renaud: Le Temps des Cerises, written by Jean-Baptiste Clément in 1866, which became the song linked to the events of the Paris Commune in 1871; and the complaint of mandrel, whose sources remain anonymous, to the glory of the bandit and smuggler who died in 1755, enemy of the generals and heroes of the people. For these songs of struggle, of revolt, we need plume, the going, of the commitment which one can only note that Renaud is not, in these recordings, in order to carry them out.
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