"Une saison volée" story

"Une saison volée" story

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“She could sing the telephone book and it would still be music”. I can’t remember who of the two of us, Oliver Fröschke or myself, said this first. In any case it became a kind of proverb between us. What I do remember, however, is that I had already started playing Françoiz Breut’s first album a long time before during my DJ-sets in diverse DJ bars. And anyone who has ever hung around behind the bar counter knows how rarely people truly react to the music. But when it comes to Françoiz Breut it was always different. As soon as a song of hers started to play, people paused in their conversations and listened carefully. Often people would ask “Who is this, please?”.

The reason for asking had become clear with her albeit quiet debut: it was more about the voice and less about the songs — here the eternal question is answered once and for all. Breut had one of the new scene’s most gifted songwriters by her side — Dominique A, her life partner. But that did not interest the bar-goers at the time, nor did it interest the press and public years later. Even when Monsieur Ané wrote her biggest hit “Si tu disais” for her second album, no one really took notice of the author-composer in the booklet. In the record shop for which I also worked, it wasn’t any different either. Nobody spoke about Dominique A, but everybody raved about Françoiz. That’s how the world is — unfair but also beautiful. When Le Pop 1 was released, Françoiz appeared on the front page of the Taz and when she played in Germany for the first time, she was the reason for the first big hype which we named Neo-Chanson or ‘Nouvelle scène française”.

I don’t want to get too personal now - but you can probably imagine how impressed I was by this development, having for many years only known her voice from records and now suddenly releasing her albums. We were simultaneously trying for the second time to win Mathieu Boogaerts over for our label. At the time Françoiz Breut was releasing her third album and was briefly signed to the same Parisian label as Boogaerts — so one thing led to another. All of a sudden we stood there and allowed to embellish our logo onto “Une saison volée”. It happened so quickly and we could hardly believe our luck. We had to fight for Boogaerts and Breut was the cherry on top of the cake. This reveals a lot about the difference of perspective between French and Germans when it comes to Chanson. When we organized a showcase in Berlin with four French artists — as well as Françoiz, Mathieu Boogaerts, Jérôme Minière and Toma were also there — people were running all over the place. And it soon became clear that most of them came to see her.

Once the tour booking started, the hype grew even more. One of the concert organizers told me she was getting calls from rivals at night. She was told to engage in other topics instead. In short: it was intense. Since the release of our first compilation I had got used to how quickly and how strongly her new listeners literally fell in love with her. “Une saison volée” is also built like a compilation with different songwriting contributions, only the audience didn’t notice — her voice remaining still more important than the songs themselves, contributed by many different artists.

To find out what makes up the character of her voice, just listen to the part of “La certitude” (written by Jérôme Minière) when she starts singing. Just the first lines. With an unwavering lightness, her voice glides over the band’s boisterousness. Like a rodeo river on a horse that is bucking hard smiling into the camera, singing. You listen to her and notice how it seems she intuitively knows where the right place to breathe is. And this breath alone is made of music — it is almost the most beautiful moment of the piece. Please do not misunderstand me. She is anything but the celebrated cliché of a breathing chanteuse. Her voice has power and is relatively deep too. Her breathing is not a stylistic device but a well-placed and well-timed necessity.

It is, after “Vingt à trente mille jours”, the second and last time that Breut sought out songs from different authors. This has a great appeal in that her act has wonderful variety, with singing in four different languages — stretching the boundaries of her Chanson ‘proper’ and breaching into all possible directions. The Indie-Rock of “La certitude” leads to the Alternative Folk of “Over all” by Herman Düne. Spanish romanticism in “Ciudad del Mar” builds a bridge to the Hardy piece “Le premier bonheur du jour” (which, by the way, she got to know and love through the Brazilians Os Mutantes), only then to return to Dominique A's then contemporary neo-Chanson“km 83”. That which seems quite naturally like a closed work, carried and held together by the warmth of her voice, was nonetheless a big challenge for her. Following this album she started writing lyrics herself and composing the songs together with a band. Due to this shift — as for example with her last album “Zoo” — the albums have a stronger red thread running through them, and a more homogeneous sound. Of which each song you should obviously listen to. What I love about “Une saison volée” is the tension, the contrasts and the casual elegance with which Françoiz Breut shines. Of course, it also has something to do with the stories that revolve around the hype of the early days of Le Pop which only became truly legendary because of them.

By the way. In March 2021, such is the plan, Françoiz Breut will bring out a new album with a completely new band. We were allowed to listen in a little and it will certainly be fantastic.

written by: Rolf Witteler, summer 2020
translated by: Mathilde Hawkins

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