What if American music’s best kept secret was French? Originally from Romans-sur-Isère, a small town in the Drôme, Renaud Brustlein started music out of idleness at the age of 14. “Rugby was never my thing, so I fell into metal,” he recalls. At 14, he played guitar in an ad hoc formation. Rehearsals every Sunday morning, discipline, rigour. “They fired me because I wasn’t good enough, that motivated me even more.” In an arid region in terms of cultural offerings, the young man made his musical culture by devouring the press, Metal Magazine and Rocksound, the one that made people buy records.
But it was his parents’ albums that turned H-Burns into American folk. “I discovered Cohen and Dylan at a very young age, then put them aside in my alt phase before coming back to them trying to play their songs on the guitar in my bedroom.” Dylan’s diction marked him as long as he unwittingly borrowed it on his first two albums. “I was obsessed,” he says. Recently, H-Burns made a pilgrimage to New York, in the footsteps of the 2016 Nobel Prize winner: the clubs of Greenwich Village, the old Columbia studio and all the Dylan mythology. “For me, these guys are characters from a novel, it goes way beyond the music. I have the impression that we have less of them like that today.”
After giving up metal, H-Burns dabbled in post-rock a bit before embracing the music he really loves. “At the start, I hid behind the effect pedals and the instrumental flights. Then, one day, I started to want texts.” If he does not like his voice and it will take him three albums to support his way of singing, H-Burns quickly turns out to be a major songwriter. The text is more painful for me in the creative gesture, it is what comes a little at the last minute. I expect to have a theme, sometimes even a red thread for an album. Quickly, H-Burns left for the United States to design his records, a way of rubbing shoulders with myths. He thus collaborates with Steve Albin, pope of the underground and former producer of Nirvana and PJ Harvey. “We worked hard before not to pass for amateurs. he confides. It was super formative, the pressure that I put on myself by going to Albini. I wanted the songs to be good and the texts to be successful.
From now on, it is in Los Angeles, in the house of Rob Schnapf, former collaborator of Elliot Smith and Beck, that H-Burns makes his albums. The latest, Sunset Park, is yet another success to be credited to this talented and sensitive artist. Before recording this album of original songs, H-Burns had recharged his batteries at the Cohen fountain with a masterful album of covers by the master, Burns on the Wire.
On April 14, at the Sirène in La Rochelle – one of the most beautiful concert halls in our country – H-Burns offered a truly exceptional evening. This gourmet, a great lover of natural wines, had asked a great chef from the city to orchestrate a menu around his music. This allowed the audience to taste delicious food while witnessing three different setups: unamplified guitar and voice for the entrance, between two pillars in the basement of the hall, amplified acoustic guitar, second guitar (electric, this time) and voice for the main course, in a beautiful space on the first floor of the room, and a 100% electric set with drums for dessert, on a central stage in a very rock atmosphere.
H-Burns will be performing on June 8 in Paris, at La Maroquinerie, this time surrounded by a full band. Do not miss.
