2023-12-08 10:51:55
For ten years we had been struggling to place this strange bird in the chaos of French music. Here is Charles-Baptiste finally installed on his throne.
In 2013, with his friend Alexandre Chatelard, Charles-Baptiste created the duo Triomphe. Their EP Pavane contained a pure marvel: an electro-pop cover of “Pavane pour une infante deceased” by Ravel. The other tracks on the EP were called “Rothschild” and “Roman”. A certain idea of French luxury, with sounds like François de Roubaix and Jacno. In a normal world, the two comrades should have triumphed at the top of the hit parade. Ten years later they remained more underground than ever.
What went wrong? Why did success smile on Juliette Armanet and not on Charles-Baptiste? However, the latter was there before. In 2014, he released his first solo album with Universal, Unspeakable Feelings. Well-arranged music, sophisticated aesthetic. Too much perhaps? In the music video for “As Cool as You”, we see our man in a suit reading The Seducer’s Diary by Kierkegaard – a reference not really calibrated for Booba’s France. Our country having never understood anything regarding pop, Charles-Baptiste slapped the variety label on himself, without being able to speak to the public regarding Renan Luce. The disheveled dandy perseveres with the EP The Pornographic Symphony in 2015, then with the album The Love & the Seum in 2020. Once once more, he can’t quite find his audience. His case may recall that of Lafayette. It is at the same time outdated and modern – too of our time for the reactors, too nostalgic for the avant-garde. He has a form of fantasy, but his humor is too sibylline – closer to that of Dodi El Sherbini than to that of Philippe Katerine. Who will understand it? Here, in the columns of Technikart, and even though we love nothing so much as exceptions and ugly ducklings, we have never defended Charles-Baptiste as he deserved. This shows that his case is difficult to understand…
Bittersweet atmosphere
With these flat apologies, let’s toast his third album, Big Kid, which marks for us the true baptism of Charles-Baptiste. We don’t know his biological parents but, in the field of French pop, he is a worthy son of Voulzy. Light melancholy, bittersweet atmosphere: we feel at home in his record. The lyrics evoke both The Knights of the Zodiac and Chateaubriand, two proofs of good taste. We hear very rounded basses, synths, strings, all magnified by a sparkling production by Alexandre Chatelard, this little-known goldsmith. There are good songs (“Brothers and Sisters”, “Two or three things that I say to Clara”) and some pure moments of grace (the intro to “Tonton” which recalls the soundtrack of Downton Abbey). The improbable meeting between Michel Fugain and Nino Rota, Alain Souchon and Ennio Morricone? On the last song, Charles-Baptiste invites the Beninese group Star Feminine Band. He definitely does everything to confuse our spatio-temporal relationships. And this is how Prince Charles becomes king!
BIG CHILD
(ROBERT RECORDS)
By Louis-Henri de La Rochefoucauld
1702157728
#Album #month #Big #Child
