Michel Jonasz, Marianne Faithfull, Bernard Lavilliers, passing by Zaz, and Gawain Use in Those People , thirteen singers of all generations are a challenge perilous, interpret Jacques Brel, on arrangements of the American, Larry Klein.
“I’m familiar with jacques Brel’s for always,” written on the booklet of the disc Larry Klein: bass player-producer-arranger, known for his productions of albums by the “crossover” of Joni Mitchell, Madeleine Peyroux or Melody Gardot, wanted to give a new lustre to the songs of the great Jacques, dressed, sometimes too much, rich sound.
Cover of “These people”
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yet, it is Difficult to match the same level of emotion that succeeded in attaining, by the simple accent of a word, Jacques Brel, the flayed alive. “Brel has such a strength of interpretation that it is difficult to tackle a mountain like that,” said Gauvain Sers. In La Valse à mille temps , the young singer outsmart “the trap of falling into a pale copy wanting to be outbid at any price”.
“The arrangements are modern Larry Klein helped me to really do something else”, he explains. “We took the decision not to accelerate the tempo of the song over verses, but rather of piling the instruments in the back to make it evolve. In it, we stood out amongst the vocal performance of the flow of Brel”.
A speed mind blowing, Zaz, she, wife to a version wild of Brussels . The arrangements by Larry Klein used Bernard Lavilliers, very credible in its own way “crooner latin lover” to embody on a background of a guitar swing and castanets the character at once pathetic and endearing Jacky in The Song of Jacky .
“You wanted to see Dutronc, and we saw Dutronc”
Jacques Brel has also given rise to on the other side of the Channel and of the Atlantic a strong admiration, on the part of musicians as much attracted to the singer than the actor. At the time of the recent demise of the pop singer Scott Walker, haunted by Brel, Marianne Faithfull offers her voice hoarse and broken a Port of Amsterdam fucked-up. Melody Gardot offers a version sober and collected, full of finesse, of The Song of Old Lovers .
“It takes time, perhaps, to understand that there is no difference between playing comedy and singing. In both cases it is always to interpret the emotions, feelings, and tell stories,” says Michel Jonasz , whose voice is just as it should be shaky for a version poignant of the Old .
Those People opens with a wink of the son to the father, with Thomas Dutronc singing in Vesoul the famous chanting of Brel: “You wanted to see Dutronc, and we saw Dutronc”…
● Marianne Faithfull sings Amsterdam in its English version translated by Mort Shuman
