The leather goods floor is still soaked with the sweat of the public who came to dance with Izïa the day before, when the singer arrives on stage. Third and last evening of a big party to celebrate a new album, Speed, and the post-covid return to the stage, to life.
Two and a half years later Citadel, Izïa confirms her pop turn, not incompatible with guitars and nervous rhythms. In short, with its origins. It is moreover with a piece of the previous album in homage to Father Higelin (metal dragon) that the artist begins the show, all in modesty.
The atmosphere heats up when the incandescent bass lines of Bastien Burger, artistic partner of Izïa, impose themselves. The heartbeats of My heart, the first single from the new album, packed the dancefloor. A disco anthem cut out for summer festivals, with liberating synths but predictable refrains and breaks.
Four songs and still not a word for the public when Izia finally quips: “We chain the pieces, we have no more time, a pandemic can fall on our faces at any moment”. Speed bears, it seems, his name perfectly. The album was born out of this urgency, this furious need to make music after two years without a concert.
For the first time, Izïa had entered the studio without a single draft of a song. But the first notes recorded at the La Frette studio, in the Paris region, sounded obvious. Like a need to cry out and live again. Tonight marks the big comeback.
Finally, here it is. The primal cry, resolutely rock, which we missed so much until then, resonates at La Maroquinerie. Izïa begins a Let Me Alone furious, from his first album. And the supercharged audience will almost bring her to tears. Fifth track and already the end of concert ovation. Because it is on her most rock songs that Izïa reveals all her vocal power, which we had almost forgotten on her last two albums. But the electronic ornaments born on The wave are never far away: the four musicians send a Reptile electrifying and ride clubbing atmosphere.
Penicillin will finally reveal the fatigue of the three evenings. Izïa has a fragile, almost broken voice, on a thread, in the end as we like it. Not enough to disappoint early fans when Izïa screams “I’m trying and I keep on trying”. “I hold the house!”, she reassures in her black jumpsuit all in transparency, sensual and rock look that we know her since her beginnings. She holds the house, certainly.
The end of the concert sounds, so come Sadness, an almost new wave track surprisingly joyful live. Last song, but “not if we judge since 2005”, launches Izïa, suggesting a burning reminder. We regret not having been able to taste live the techno of Outside (that’s life) that Izïa unveiled the same day on Speedand the hymn to the melancholy life The curesong inspired by his father.
But the shadow of Jacques Higelin is never far from Izïa, who this evening, as usual, will have shared laughter and tears. The singer does not have to be asked to come back on stage after 1h30 in concert and sing the overwhelming Idol, last message to the father. It is in this last straight line that it delivers the eponymous litre, Speed. Nicolas Musset’s reggaeton intro on drums ends up winning the audience’s hips. Emancipating piece on which, cleared of all limits, Izïa rushes.
But with Izïa, when there are no more, there are still some. Second unexpected callback. “I will never leave this scene again in my life, I will not be screwed twice, I will not give it back”, mumbles the singer into her microphone. She comes back for an ultimate sugarcane, from the first album, a cappella, raw and inhabited. As if to remind us that five albums earlier, she was called “little French Janis Joplin”. And Izïa still deserves her title.