“Well in spite of myself / settles in my body / this need to want / disappear by snapping your fingers”, confides Rosie Valland on one of the tracks of this third album in the form of a great unveiling, at the heart of which it is however less a question of disappearing. than drop the masks.
Posted at 3:30 p.m.
Like the Boulay sisters’ recent album, Emmanuelle is based on what may at first sight seem like a paradox: it is by embracing the synthetic sounds of a certain international pop that Rosie Valland signs her cycle of songs the least embarrassed with artifice, the least veiled.
Its cover, adorned with a childhood photo, and its title, Emmanuellea nod to the artist’s real first name (Rose-Emmanuelle), immediately put their cards on the table: if Rosie Valland is transfigured, it is less by hiding behind a new identity than by finally assuming her lifelong love for pop.
His previous album, BLUE (2020), certainly moved away from the folk rock of its beginnings, drawing in particular on the soft rock of the 1980s. whether it be. If the texts ofEmmanuelle are inhabited by many anxieties, it is about these anxieties which arise at the precise moment when one stops playing with something other than oneself.
No wonder Rosie Valland borrows the main colors of this reinvention from the radio pop of the late 1990s and early 2000s, that of her childhood. The singer obviously studied the divas of the time well and decorates the walls of her choruses with numerous and bewitching voice tracks. R’n’b, trip hop, dance à la Eveyrything but the Girl: Emmanuelle contains rich references, while rooting itself in the sound of the present thanks to co-producer Frédéric Levac and rhythm makers Félix Petit (Les Louanges), Mike Clay (Clay and Friends) and Gene Tellem.
Emile Farley is nevertheless the hero in the shadows of this disc, he who signs with Stirring up the dilemma one of the beefiest bass lines since Alain Caron on Miami (1980) by Diane Tell. His performances on the languorous Exile and the banter No thanks also magnify the heady melodies of the new Rosie.
“Every second that we overcome is a triumph here below”, she sings on Down herea phrase straight out of the gospel FM of Jean-Jacques Goldman, period Two. A sentence, and a song, that Celine Dion could easily make her own on her next album in French. We obviously hear it as a huge compliment.
Pop
Emmanuelle
Rosie Valland
Secret City