Review in Music Actu
Isa Somparé, author and composer, brings a breath of freshness, originality and contemporaneity to the French song. In this second album, the musical atmospheres are particularly worked. They are impregnated with synthetic sounds deploying a kaleidoscope of moving and crackling layers, electronic percussions, synth-bass and other timbres to which are regularly associated the velvety, warm and luminous tones of a piano, a Rodhes keyboard, a guitar or the roundness of an electric bass. This sonorous setting colored by jazz, blues, swing and electro-pop accompanies a melodious song distilling lyrics with often engaged themes. The artist draws a portrait of the World through current themes that regularly hit our daily lives
Thus, the cruel ecological situation is evoked in Le Monde est fou under the false airs of a naive and childish song with skilfully worked harmonies symbolizing the ambient madness and the uneasiness relative to the subject. With its nonchalant style and sulphurous charm, Le carrefour du diable (The Devil’s Crossroads), which starts with an evocative guitar solo, recalls the mythical story of bluesman Robert Johnson who made a pact with the devil at a crossroads to play the bewitching blues that would make his legend.
Porn Geneva portrays prostitution in the neighborhoods where women are displayed in shop windows. The music cleverly alternates synthetic sounding atmospheres evoking the coldness of prostitution and the commodification of women with a delicate piano when the lyrics evoke the beauty of women as human beings. The quest of migrants for a better world is treated in a touching and poetic way in Traverser les rivières. Miss K is a portrait of a woman without “fuss” or “blah”. Le Lac Léman is a vaporous and dreamy painting with an underlying tragic-sentimental story combining synthetic waves, blues piano and sensual melody. And J’attends ends the album with a soft contemplative blues echoing the suspended time of the first confinement.
The album is short (25 minutes). It’s a good way to listen to it and to listen again in order to get the best of Isa Somparé’s original talent with a stylish and assertive universe combining fantasy, sensitivity and aesthetic requirement! An album to discover…