Marc, Yvan
Avant Les Deserts
A whole generation (Ours, Féloche, Alexis HK, Émilie Marsh, Jil Caplan) came together to pay tribute to him in his latest album "Pas tout Seul", Yvan Marc continues his journey in complete discretion, like a Jean-Louis Murat, with a new, more pop and solar album "Avant les deserts".Since the very successful Nos vies d'ours with discreet country flavors released in 2016, Yvan Marc has published two folk-pop nuggets in 2018 and 2020 (Nos Dimanches and L'Ancien Soleil) which marked an important milestone in his discography. After a generous and recreational interlude - Pas tout Seul, an album of duets, released in 2021 - shared with eleven artist friends (including Jil Caplan, Alexis HK and Les Ogres de Barback), the Altiligrian songwriter returns this year with a new opus, Avant les déserts.What strikes and seduces from the first listens is the general sound color of the album. The production - resolutely pop - is as delicate as the previous records, but here it is enriched with electro ingredients that are always carefully measured and which further anchor Yvan Marc in his era. Over the course of the albums, we have the sensation that his texts gain in density, in conciseness, in strength too, while his voice, deeper than ever, combines nonchalance and intensity with a lot of feeling.This is particularly the case with, M'aimes-tu?, with accents of Bashung (Jean Fauque period) and CharlÉlie Couture (Island period) where he handles singing and speaking with great ease, in a mixture of acoustic folk and electro-pop. In this autopsy of a dying relationship, Yvan Marc gives us a vitriolic self-criticism.These contrasting feelings, full of regrets and pain, appear from the opening of the album with the classy ballad A Terre, shrouded in synths, which questions desire and which evokes a loving dance from which one does not emerge unscathed. , a dangerous game tinged with jealousy and seduction in which we lose ourselves...From the next track (Le mépris), the rhythm intensifies and a very assertive electro beat serves as a pulse for another settling of romantic scores, an inventory of a breakup worn by the passing of time and spoiled by contempt. We will find this same bitterness in the nostalgic Rester Dehors.Other lyrics on the album evoke the feeling of love but with less disillusionment, far from regrets. This is the case of Viens, a luminous reggae-pop ballad with a heady chorus which depicts the loved one as a redemptive presence and of Tu le sais it which reminds us of the urgency of living and loving.The evanescent choruses of Garder la joie also take us on this same path, encouraging us to ignore bitterness and the passing of time.This prayer, however, remains very fragile on certain other, more societal, tracks on the album.In Avant les déserts, Yvan Marc's poetry becomes more frontal and falls like a blade to express our environmental concerns on cold yet dancing music, as if men were still struggling in the rubble of a world that is consuming... An observation full of sadness and lucidity that we find in Sommes-nous prêts? and also T'entendre rire. However, in this dark world with a more than uncertain horizon, we feel hope dawning in a beautiful final flight: "Anger harms dreams / Give me your smiles / If you have any left in reserve / I want to hear you laugh."Still in this societal vein, Avant l'âge depicts the modern jungle in the guise of a financial tycoon who draws his wealth from the crisis and the exploitation of a people asphyxiated by fear and work... A comment without qualms coldly chanted to a "I wear you out before your time / Oppress you, put you in a cage / I fuck you".Echoing this cynical and unethical character, Yvan Marc touches us right in the heart in Je m'ennuie where he paints the portrait of an adolescent lost in the complexity of our time, questioning himself as much about his own future as about the the future of this uncertain world. This song wonderfully captures this contemporary generational boredom by giving voice to a youth drowned in digital technology, lost in the face of this society without ideals, without reference points, quite simply in search of meaning.Full of nuances, Yvan Marc appropriates the sounds of our time to question a world adrift and sing about the difficulty of loving... but Avant les deserts is also an opportunity for Yvan Marc to assert his modern poetry and to assume its paradoxes, its doubts and its fragilities. Which are also ours.