Accompanied by Daniel Bélanger, the long voluntary walk of Mercury in May, the first Secret City album since leaving Audiogram. Or how to go elsewhere to find yourself better.
“Sharing a temporary eternity”, wishes Daniel Bélanger in Sunrise. The man who wanders at random on the sidewalks of his neighborhood, in the heart of the city, talks to himself, talks to us, addresses the rising sun, straight ahead like an unavoidable interlocutor: “And you, and you, rising sun / Give me, give me / All you need / All you need / All you need and start again / The right spine and shoulders / Well relaxed / All ready to go through the unexpected “.
Small noises interfere, it’s like a thousand samples of songs that intrude the space of a “temporary eternity” and then go away. There are some throughout the album, all along the way, puffs of sound, puzzle of tunes in the wind. “It’s my culture that bursts in,” he comments, laughing. “My culture of advertising, my culture of TV show themes that have marked me, my culture of words heard in conversations, my culture of music of all kinds: it’s the millions of sounds that mingle and clash in my memory. »
The sound baggage of a lifetime
While walking, as if the “wind of ideas”, opening title of Mercury in May, opened doors and windows haphazardly, it carries the sound baggage of a lifetime. Sixty years more or less loose inside Daniel Bélanger. And a little more. Since he was born in December 1961, there are almost sixty-one years of mixed noises. Time spent, messy usufruct. Later in the album there is a song called I hear everything playing (in your head). In addition, he is connected, the fellow. To someone else, to a multitude of others. “In my head resounds the echo of you”, he sings with another himself, who repeats the words with a small delay. The cracks in the asphalt are canyons, sometimes the walker gets stuck and rushes in, and the noise amplifies to infinity, so deeply that at the bottom, there is only silence and a small cloud of smoke, as in the falls of Wile E. Coyote.
“Nothing settles down,” continues Bélanger. “The song goes quietly, and then it zaps like on Instagram or TikTok, a fraction of a second of a little guy on a bicycle who breaks his face, a fraction of a second where a lion is jumping, etc. The culture of nonsense that dazzles the retina and assaults the eardrums, what? “It’s an interpretation,” agrees the elusive Daniel, laughing again. “The intention was a bit like this: to make an album as you live a day, in slices of a few minutes, with moments of overload ofinput where the very great calm can be disturbed at any time. »
Concept album or not?
Concept album, therefore, to use the good old expression invented for Sgt. Pepper’s ? “It’s not me who says it,” rebuffs the person concerned. Nonetheless, there is In the wind of ideasthen Sunrisethen Sleep in the car : « The day wakes up on my car / And on all my aches […] Open the eye, wiggle the toe / A prayer to the sun / Thus the end of dormancy / And the beginning of hope”. Anything can happen afterwards: in Joy, a sort of burst of light. “It’s liquid diamond / that wets the pupils”, nothing less. “It all fits, it seems,” jokes Bélanger, almost surprised to see the logic of his approach. “I have my nose glued to it so much, everything surprises me. I discover the album as people tell me about it. »
“I remember the initial intentions, he continues. For example, in I hear everything playing (in your head), my intention was to have an endless chorus, but right at the end. Do everything I have to do, without a chorus in my legs, and then let the chorus pick up the tune. The intention is formal first, we understand, and does not concern the subject: “Yes. It’s very down to earth. This is my first perception, my first project. Where I end up from there is open to all interpretations. I know what I wanted to do, but not so much what I managed to say…” It’s up to everyone to make up their own mind. Yes, there is the dawn first, the awakening, the sun and everything that follows, but the game of concept is the result of the collision with the culture of each listener.
In agreement with oneself and others
Still, it leads to this line in the eighth of the ten pieces, With some flowers : When the contours of my age will be all traced […] I will take the time / Never except with flowers”. After Hiatusa sort of instrumental interlude, we arrive at what looks like a conclusion: You have to agree. “We must agree in gender and number / Even degendered, even counted / We must agree”. As the ancestors used to say to turbulent children… agree, the accordion is so beautiful!
The intention was a bit like this: to make an album as you live a day, in slices of a few minutes, with moments of overloadinput where the very great calm can be disturbed at any time.
“Yes, it’s still wanted, loose Daniel Bélanger. There is what we control and there is what we do not control. This desire to trace my contours, which manifests itself in words in the songs and also in the drawing on the back of the album [plus qu’impressionnant dans le format 33 tours], I accomplish it in these traits that come together. I like it, it reassures me in my own coherence. The rest is more vague. Laugh on the line.
What he knows for a fact is that he finally agreed to do pure Daniel Bélanger, as at the beginning. Button weighed on pause on style exercises, rockabilly here, Russian songs there, musicals and Morriconian neo-western: the exit from Audiogram (in the wake of the retirement of big brother Michel) and the entry into Secret City Records have thus sounded the return of the fabulous melodist from the time of… dream better. Yes, that level. “I have long reacted to dream betterI pretty much did everything not to be characterized dream better. With hardware failurewith City chic and other adventures, but there, I felt like singing… freely. As freely as I did Heavy weights [son tout récent recueil de poésie, paru aux Herbes rouges]. Make music in my own way, even if it looks a bit like me… Hum…”
Little puffs of satisfaction from the Bélanger who assumes himself and admits it to us by admitting it. Even if it means having to bear comparison with the greatest successes of his song period. And if necessary include tons of sounds evoking the proliferation of sources and influences along the way. “I decided to simply accept myself. ” That’s good : Mercury in May is the Daniel Bélanger album we’ve been waiting for… dream better. In better dream? “It’s not me who will say it. »