[engl] Marietta is the new project of Guillaume Marietta after The Feeling Of Love.

[engl] Sophomore album by Marietta, La Passagère follows Basement Dreams Are The Bedroom Cream (Born Bad Records, 2015), which was lauded by French daily newspaper Liberation, magazines Les Inrockuptibles, Magic, New Noise and online magazine Noisey. After touring with his band for two years and playing well-received concerts at Villette Sonique, Rock en Seine, Levitation Festival, Musiques Volantes, Bars en Trans, laureate of leading French development prize Fair 2017 Guillaume Marietta has come back with nine songs written in French for the first time. The album was recorded in Los Angeles by Chris Cohen, singer-songwriter and producer extraordinaire, with two albums signed on Captured Tracks and past member of Deerhoof and The Curtains. Mixed by Kenneth Gilmore, permanent member of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, who counts in his mixing catalogue Front Row Seat To Earth by Weyes Blood and My Dreams Dictate My Reality by SOKO. A carnal, sensual, hallucinating and melancholic record, fed by representations of the woman, the modern city, self-abandon, paranoia and redemption. La Passagère is inhabited by the ghosts of Syd Barret and Lou Reed, and nods to contemporary productions by Kurt Vile, Cate Lebon, Tim Presley, Kevin Morby, and of course Chris Cohen.

[engl] In 20 or 30 years, we’ll talk about Guillaume Marietta the same way we talk about Arthur Russell or Robert Johnson today – people ignored by their contemporaries and rediscovered later in prestigious anthologies or picaresque documentaries. Future being rather incertain these days, it would maybe be better if you didn’t lose any time and enjoy Marietta right away. Sure, it won’t be easy to map Marietta’s journey – one of the key players of the GrandeTriple Alliance De l’Est, an anarchic scene which exploded between Metz and Strasbourg in the early 2000s, fronting bands such as A.H. Kraken, Plastobe?ton and The Feeling Of Love. In 2015 he released his first solo album, Basement Dreams Are The Bedroom Cream, an amazing collection of 4-track twisted lullabies who got him comparisons with Syd Barrett and John Frusciante. Then comes his second LP and suddenly you lose the track – footprints have been covered – no more of that sweet demo sounding folky weirdness : La Passage?re is recorded in Los Angeles with Chris Cohen and it’s a lush and mesmerizing record, like Berlin with windows wide open or a sun-drenched The Idiot. A record that gives Marietta’s music new layers of depth and complexity – even if he loses part of his audience in the process. Following this would be tough – and hazardous No studio sessions in LA, no 4-track demos, Prazepam St. has been recorded with cracked computer music software. Richer and fuller than the two previous records, this new LP is also, paradoxically, unbashed and easier to grasp. “I wanted to have fun,” says Marietta. Build a dark and bright world with my little hands and raw material, like David Lynch when he did Eraserhead “- one of the main keys to the album. It is also, more involuntarily a synthesis – there’s the raw side of the first album, that more flamboyant and ambitious of the second, but also small pieces of AH Kraken, Feeling Of Love and even Funk Police. Marietta went back to some of his teenage years fovorite records – Sonic Youth, Beck, Nirvana, the Beastie Boys, but also Jim O’Rourke or David Pajo – “Pajo” is a nod to te guitarist from Slint whose solo project Papa M is a mainstay on Guillaume’s record collection. Prazepam St. is also a dark and twisted record, as its title shows – a reference to an anxiolitic used for severe depression. “I have often tried to speak in my lyrics of the way the human mind works, of our contradictions, of our inner darkness, explains Marietta. And this time I wanted to bring the lexical field of drugs into my texts. Our body and mind are shaped by these substances that we use and abuse and I wanted to play with that. It’s a chemical album. » Proof made with « Dmpa », a molecule used as a chemical castrator on American sex offenders, transformed here into a battered folk song crushed by samples, rhythm machines and breaks from outer space. Or « Aluminum”, a solid and shiny but highly harmful element, like the incandescent ride full of rumbling synths, which opens the album – not an innocent choice: “Aluminum fairly well reflects our ability to accept all the things that we are presented with as being necessary for our daily life, concludes Marietta. Despite the experience, we always do the opposite of what is good for us. ” Like ignoring Marietta records, for exemple. Awaiting for 20 or 30 years to praise them. But you know what? He’s here. Right now. Enjoy.