For those who have been waiting so long for Michel Polnareff's new studio album - his latest, Kâma-Sûtra, a company that has been around since 1990 - the presence on the iTunes Store and in pre-order at FNAC of this new opus, brilliantly entitled Finally! is sure to stir the emotions. Yes, this time it's not a joke, or even a lie. Polnareff had been saying the same thing from the start: «the record will be released when it's perfect and finished.» Far from mocking his public, he prepared for them what would first satisfy them, for whom only the final result counts.
Read also | Philippe Manœuvre: «The Polnareff album exists, because I listened to it».»
Tonight, at 00:01, Don't grow up was magically released on download platforms as the first single from this new album of original songs. Of course, there were The Man in Red, released in December 2015, when the album was «almost finished», but rumor has it that this grandiloquent lament about loneliness at Christmas has been arranged in a new version for the album to be released in two weeks' time. Don't grow up is therefore the first extract we're sure to find its way into our hands, or ears, so to speak.
A return to its golden age
And then we listen, and we cry. Such emotion in Michel Polnareff's voice, perhaps never before heard in a studio creation. With lyrics co-written with Doriand, who also contributes three other tracks to the album due for release on November 30, music composed entirely by Polnareff and directed by the great Ryan Freeland, Don't grow up is a long piano-vocal ballad that reconnects the singer with his golden age, marked by such gems as Our words of love, Who killed Grandma? or It only happens to others, but without strings or drums. A foretaste of’Finally! delivered tonight by the artist is breathtakingly sober.
The choice of these minimalist arrangements is all the more astounding given that Michel Polnareff had accustomed his public to large, thundering orchestrations, in the vein of Gloria (1970), one of the most striking marks of his genius. The Man in Red was in that style. Perhaps the singer-songwriter has learned his lesson from the relative disappointment of some of his fans and the media when this track was released three years ago, which despite the unanimously recognized quality of its instrumentation and - as always - its melody, featured a very smooth pop voice.
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On Don't grow up, We hear Polnareff as if he were performing in front of us, live, behind his piano. With a tear in his eye and his heart uncovered. This is a father speaking to the world, a father who doesn't want his little boy to grow up, and who expresses this in a tenderness that's bare and assumed. This sensitive Polnareff, this Admiral who navigates between singing and whispering at certain moments of this 5’10’’ song, this voice that goes into an emotional tailspin, is the one we love the most, and who has certainly given birth to a new masterpiece.
Polnareff's courage
Paradoxically, it is Michel Polnareff's courage that we will remember on this important day in his career. The courage to assume his timbre, which is obviously no longer the same as the one we hear on Love Me Please Love Me (1966) and I love you (1981), but with a different, equally bewitching charm. The courage to put forward what is known as an «album song», a track that has nothing in common with a radio hit, but which testifies to an album polished in its every melancholy corner. The courage to address her son in this way. And the courage to publish this intimate, filial letter to the general public.
«Keep the age of clouds
Tender and light
This face, landscape
So perfect
Make this man wait
That man inside you
Who will keep us apart
In spite of you, in spite of us
In spite of myselfAnd when you stood
To me, facing the unknown
I liked so much to reassure you
Now I'm the one who's lost.»
We too will need courage to wait for the album. Finally! which will be released in two weeks to the day. And without giving in to impatience.
Great article on the album Finally! in its entirety, with an in-depth analysis of each song in our January issue, Order here.
Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com
Photo credit: © Wikimedia CC BY 4.0 - El pitareio
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