The pandemic, he notes during his singing tour, will have at least allowed him to rest his voice for two seasons. Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine hit the road once more, at 73, with two tours in prospect which will take him at least until April 2023. Suffice to say that the singer was burning to find his faithful by criss-crossing the country. This ordinary had however cost him a burn-out in 2008: at 180 hotel rooms per year, one goes crazy, he had been warned. The extremist had wanted to check for himself and went up to 220.
The announced program is fortunately not so Stakhanovite and will be declined in two stages. An “unplugged” acoustic component, favoring rooms on a human scale, then its “replugged” reverse side, reconnected, in Zenith-type gauges. Thiéfaine cheats somewhat with the concept since bass, guitar and electric keyboards completed at times, Wednesday January 26, the instrumentarium deployed at the Folies-Bergère for the first of its four Parisian evenings. The Jurassien refuses nothing: following the splendid Art Deco room at 9e arrondissement, he moved to the Salle Pleyel, then to the Olympia and the Grand Rex. The one who struggled for a long time in his early days, in the 1970s, scouring the cabarets of the left bank, may be savoring his revenge. Long ignored by the mainstream media, he did not have “the menu” with the aesthetes of the capital who reserved their favors for Alain Bashung.
The burlesque dimension of his first songs is evacuated
In any case, here is the Doors fan voluntarily stripped of his desires for ceremonial rock in this historic temple of music hall and quilled magazines, haunted by Loïe Fuller and the recently pantheonized Joséphine Baker. Thiéfaine, who likes to break with his habits, returned to his roots in 2004 by dusting off his acoustic guitar and harmonica for a solo getaway, revealing what he owed Bob Dylan. From his formative years, he resumed I leave you to the wind, Vendôme Gardénal Snack and Tail, as much variations of the acknowledgment of sentimental failure what is The Artist’s Life, of Léo Ferré, another influence which he had to get rid of to find his way.
The burlesque dimension contained in the first songs of the former seminarian from Dole (Jura) who moved to Paris is evacuated, with one exception, for the last reminder: the inevitable Daughter of the Joint Cutter, still as effective as a drinking song – or rather a smoking song. The other light truce is Pulque, mescal and tequila, selected to celebrate the “fourteenth year without alcohol” of the singer.
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