Alain Bashung
Bleu pétrole

Hoping that someone might want to delve into and comment here on the previous works of this artist, so poorly regarded in Italy, I conclude this brief retrospective on Alain Bashung with Bleu pétrole, his last album of original songs released a full six years after the previous one, L'imprudence.

When listening to them in succession, the years actually seem much longer, such is the musical and stylistic distance that separates them. If L'imprudence delivered the portrait of a Bashung increasingly resistant to the song format and rock conventions, here we find him more than ever a "singer of songs," in the narrowest and most French sense of the term. I say singer because in this last musical effort, Bashung's absence as a composer stands out, as he chooses to rely on songwriters Gaetan Roussel and Gérard Manset, who penned almost all the tracks. This does not in any way compromise the quality of the songwriting, which is indeed very solid; we already sense it in the album's second track, Résidents de la République, a sincere yet slightly disillusioned critique of Sarkozy’s France, but also in Je T'ai Manqué or in Venus, the latter of which could easily have come from Jacques Brel's pen.
As usual, the presence of great musicians and collaborators is notable, including the now faithful Marc Ribot and especially Mark Plati, who was very active in the '90s alongside David Bowie. Both leave a strong mark on the album's most intense and moving track, Sur un trapèze.
Except for the aforementioned tracks, the rest of the album flows without great flashes: we encounter a few good pieces (Comme un lego), a few slight lapses in style (Hier a Sousse, a very forgettable reinterpretation of Cohen’s Suzanne), but overall it's an album that is easy to listen to, provided you are fully aware of the now unbridgeable distance from the experimentation and the brilliant outbursts of the two preceding albums.

Probably also due to non-musical reasons (during recording and the last tour, Bashung was already terminally ill), the album was triumphantly received in France by both the public and critics, winning three Victoires de la Musique and ranking 46th on the list of the best French rock albums of all time. Recognitions that perhaps bring a smile when related to the album in question, but if Bashung's human and musical story has intrigued you even a little, you cannot help but rejoice at the plethora of awards and honors that were bestowed upon this great artist in his homeland in the last months of his life, to which the Legion of Honor, awarded at the beginning of 2009, is added.
The album concludes with Il voyage en solitaire, a truly wonderful song written by Manset in the '70s, still a great classic of the French chanson. Bashung sings it on tiptoe, letting himself be cradled by the beauty of the text and the melody, which has nothing to do with his history and musical background, but because of this, it well represents the artistic life of an artist who has always "traveled alone," treading unconventional paths and securing for himself, at the photo finish of his career, an untouchable place in the history of French music.