The Belgian master is back and the joke “Verlan” was inevitable. After a few years of hiatus, among other reasons to give his head a rest, and above all to get some oxygen, explore and travel around the world, Stromae he returns with his most ambitious work musically and artistically speaking of his career.
Having been away from music all this time does not mean that he has been lounging around the house, because among other things he has founded his creative company Mosaert and has been the artistic director of the Billie Eilish clip hosting, apart from promoting its clothing brand. the trips of Stromae they have served him to discover, assimilate and incorporate new instruments, music and rhythms into his art. From cumbia to Cuban or African rhythms, passing through ancient Chinese instruments that merge with the already previous musical kaleidoscope of the Belgian. crowd It is a global work, an overwhelming universal soundtrack full of thousands of details that you discover listen after listen. I have been involved in the preparation of this review for weeks and at times I was unable to express in words the beauty that hides in the grooves of crowd. Stromae It will never be vindicated enough, but great artists in the past were not either: John Fante, Van Gogh or Jonathan Larson, more recently.
crowd it can be whatever the listener wants, a banal record or a spiritual guide. And that only happens with true works of art. Who doesn’t get a chill down the spine when he faces “the lonely” is that it is dead in life. A musical canvas rich in nuances, rhythms of the music of the slaves, echoes of Africa, celestial choirs, a heartbreaking lyrics and what to say about the incorporation of ancient Asian instruments in the middle of a cut… musical Stendhal syndrome But before this song Stromae has already beaten us with Invalid, those African children’s choirs and a resplendent crescendo with his most vibrant and muscular rapping should be studied in conservatories around the world. It moves you inside and invites you to dream of abandoning yourself to the adventure of traveling for the pleasure of assimilating other cultures. what of Sante It is a master move, a brutal win-win. An electro cumbia as addictive as it is fun that can be seen as a light work with a little dance including TikTok meat or as a postcard from musical South America that has created metastases in the DNA of Stromae.
The visual aspect of the disc has a masterpiece with the video clip of Fils du Joie a real joy that elevates the video clip to the category of capital art. The song itself is musically exciting because of the stylistic swerves and swerves as rich as crazy echoes of Mozart? fucking genius.
After these four cuts comes L’Enfer, an open grave song where he portrays the mental problems that affect many of us and that only a few brave people recognize in public. it hurts that Stromae tells us his bloody thoughts… and that he does it in a brilliant and danceable way is even more disconcerting. How disconcerting was his performance in the middle of an interview on the top-rated newscast on French television. Historical period.
He has reinvented pop and no one has noticed. The structures are the usual classics but there is a lot of hidden value in songs like Country Vraiment where the most classic chançon merges with Arab musical effluvia that leave you cold. Riez plays with the past musical memory of the French-speaking world to take it a few decades into the future. You can enjoy these songs so much that I will never do my words justice.
And we reach the epilogue with a musical triad that opens with the experimental statement, that drinks well from the cinema of Gaspart Noe as well as from the prose of Gael Faye. A spiritual journey that turns from intriguing to relaxing with surprising ease. Mauvaise Journey brings us to Stromae more chronicler, more literary. The sunny close, like a sunrise on the African savannah that is Bonne Journee, is the perfect coda to an album of ten. An album that makes you feel insignificant and privileged at the same time. The value of Stromae as an artist it is within the reach of very few.
We would like to give thanks to the author of this post for this amazing material
