Sébastien Tellier
L'Aventura

By popular demand, here is "L'Aventura" by Sébastien Tellier; with a cover like this, you can't go wrong, right? Well, it certainly doesn't go unnoticed, and it fully reflects the content of the album: summery, full of colors, with a very relaxed and slightly laid-back attitude, but not only that. Beyond the hippie aesthetic, beyond that bearded singer-songwriter look from the '70s, we find a very, very ambitious artist, one who isn't content with making simple radio pop, he wants something more. No obsessive search for chart-topping singles, refined sounds, structures that don't confine themselves solely to the classic song form, allowing wide spaces for instrumental parts; grandiose, meticulous with every tiny detail, a perfectionist, even if sometimes a bit showy and inconclusive. I've more or less summed up Sébastien Tellier in this way, at least regarding this specific album; a very interesting artist with undeniable qualities, to be watched with great attention.

Yes, but who is this person anyway? French, born in 1975, first album dated 2001, he has always recorded for an independent label, participated in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2008, much supported by fellow French artists Air and Daft Punk. Interesting, very interesting, and even more interesting is the fact that between 2012 and 2014 he released three albums in three years, of which the two I had the chance to listen to, "Confection" and indeed "L'Aventura" are both complex, ambitious, and very structured works, as well as being completely different from each other; chapeau. So, "L'Aventura": take Isabelle Antena, Donovan from the '68-'69 period, and the Saint Etienne of "Tiger Bay", mix well, adding a generous dose of tropicalia atmospheres and grandeur to taste, et voilà, you're done. An absolutely delightful mix and not easy to convey effectively, without slipping into something that sounds like a pretentious medley; with cleverness and a lot of balancing, Sèbastien Tellier managed. He keeps you waiting, like a true diva, opening the album with an instrumental track, just like Saint Etienne did in '94; "Love", a melody for flute, choirs, and percussion, airy and evocative, which holds the scene for over four minutes stimulating in the listener a pleasant sense of expectation, of suspense: nice prelude, what comes next? Well, next comes "Sous le rayons du soleil", a splendid combination of orchestrations and lazy electronic rhythms, calm and slightly affected voice; a potential single, incredibly catchy melody and refrain, except it fades out after barely a couple of minutes, indulging in a lovely instrumental dissolution; stylish and a bit disorienting, Séb rarely chooses the most obvious solution.

Among the album's most successful episodes, I would certainly mention "L'amour carnaval" and "Ma Calypso", with simple and highly refined folk/Caribbean sounds, just slightly contaminated by electronic inserts; more sober and thoughtful the first, visionary and very sensual the second; songs that, precisely because of the presence of the acoustic guitar and ethnic percussion, represent an additional reminiscence of that big record that was "Tiger Bay" by SE, expressing a truly captivating sophisticated simplicity that is not easy to achieve. And then there's "Comment revoir Oursinet" with its fourteen-minute duration: it could have been a trap, instead, it's the apotheosis, here Séb goes all in, putting into play all his vision, creativity, and ambition: imposing orchestrations, tempo changes, vintage melodies, instrumental passages of great charm, and a subtle melancholy as a common thread; a small pop symphony, something of which Phil Spector would be proud.

"L'Aventura" really offers a lot, in every sense, and with the side effects that come with it: in constantly searching for a particular and sophisticated style, sometimes a bit of freshness and spontaneity is lost, it's almost physiological. Episodes like "Ricky l'adolescent", "Ambiance Rio", and "Aller vers le soleil" struggle to take off; too repetitive and drawn-out, but there are other excellent episodes like "L'adulte", an intriguing bossa nova with a Donovan touch, and "L'enfant vert", which closes the circle again with an enchanting flute and hippie-Brazilian suggestions, so I'd say everything is fine. Therefore, despite some forgivable self-indulgence and showiness, "L'Aventura" is a great album, creative and full of personality; perfect for a siesta in great style, thanks to that distracted and slightly pleasing attitude that indeed reminds me of the best Donovan. Once again, chapeau, recreating this kind of atmosphere and approach in 2014, successfully avoiding excessive affectations and references is not something everyone can do.