This Friday, April 28, Christophe Miossec published a post on Instagram, to announce that he had to prioritize his health. The 58-year-old singer has indeed announced that his vocal cords need to be treated. In this same publication, he wanted to thank his thousands of fans for their understanding and the warm welcome given to his latest album, Simplifier. “Tourneboulé” by the 25th anniversary tour of Boire, his founding album, Miossec had returned to the minimalism of the beginnings to sing the destiny of Gérald Thomassin, ex-actor disappeared in the wild, or the sidings of love stories.
With these straightforward arrangements, on the bone, it is impossible not to think of his first reissued record for his 25th birthday in 2020, before starting an anniversary tour in stride. “This tour took me back to prehistory, when I was making an album alone at home, when my friends considered me in distress when they saw this guy who wants to be a musician at 30 at a time when we didn’t live on music. indie”, told the Breton to AFP.
Simplify, summed up the record’s birth certificate. The artist had imposed a “confinement” to tinker alone with guitar, bass and drum machine from 1969. “It was not to do vintage but to cling to carnal things, not to finish a computer in front of the nose”. This “proto-punk” approach is in his eyes only “poetry”. The one who will celebrate his 60th birthday at the end of 2024 wanted to “find the roots of evil”, this mixture of autarky and madness, “this thing when the nights become days, when we take off in these moments”.
On Simplifier, Miossec takes the roads of its existence in the opposite direction, with full headlights. Back to Brest, where it all started, and to Vauban, the city’s mythical concert hall. The title Je m’appelle Charles is a portrait of Charles Muzy, his friend, owner of this colorful place. “The people who come there are hallucinating, the dressing rooms are open, it is better to hide your beers if you want them when you leave the stage”, laughs Miossec who, in this album, also evokes his former life as a journalist, before the music. The title of the song Who, what, where, how and why? plays on the questions that a press article must answer.
Best young male hope celebrates “The unknown of the Post”, investigation of the journalist Florence Aubenas on Gérald Thomassin. And then there is this piece, My cars. He speaks of “the one who ended up in a wall one fine evening”. And we understand over the lyrics that it is not about bodywork but about deep-rooted love stories.