“The idea came to me after a duo concert with keyboardist Julien Noël. The fact of being accompanied by a musician of this caliber, allowing me to concentrate more on my singing and stage posture, gave me a rare feeling of freedom on stage, and, of course, made me want to extend it. All that remained was to find the right moment...”.
 

The time came, and the duo became a trio with the arrival of Sébastien Boisseau on double bass. They headed for Studio La Buissonne (not far from Carpentras), a mecca for organic music masterfully run by Gérard de Haro, an expert and passionate practitioner. The desire is clear and shared by all: to work off the beaten rhythmic track (without clicks or drummers, of course). A recording that favors silence and the science of detail. And even though it's counted down, we let ourselves be surprised: we abandoned a song we believed in, and recorded another that wasn't planned. It's the singer's pleasure that comes first, so I can't get bored.
 

Thanks to this invigorating purity, many of the songs are given a new lease of life. Dominique reinvents his songs with renewed pleasure, and so do we. A new dramaturgy for Dominique A's words is proposed here. The absent gesture has never been so absent, and the city enjoys a new silence. “Surrounded by musicians of their ilk, I've developed a taste for being “only” a singer on stage, concentrating on interpretation and occupying the stage space differently, and more strongly I think.
 

Except that Dominique A also remains a relentless songwriter, who today allows himself themes and stories that resonate with the zeitgeist. Witness these three powerful new tracks. La Chemise à Fleurs* is an intimate, self-deprecating punch: “Even if I'm not sad / as soon as I sing, it becomes sinister / all the gardens are on winter time / all the palaces are crumbling under the dust / I won't wear a flowery shirt / it's better to entrust these flowers / to sunnier people than me”.
 

Dominique A questions and interrogates without ever leaving poetic territory. He also explores our relationship with the animal world, which was disrupted during the last confinement: “The animals came / Ever more numerous / Down from the hills / Grave and silent (...) Worried, they looked us straight in the face / Deep in the eyes” (*Les animaux*). Dominique A's evocative power is undoubtedly intact.
 

Even more seriously and powerfully, it's our very humanity (in every sense of the word) that he shakes up in the song of the same name: “I held you in my arms / I saw you playing in the garden / Consoled you how many times / Saw you running along the paths / All to come to this / To see you marching with your hand raised / Bellowing as if we didn't understand / Slogans of inhumanity”. Like a dizzy spell, Dominique's words seem to have been overtaken by history. But with this retrospective and pivotal double album, a new page in his own seems to be turned. We can't wait for the next one.