On stage, La Grande Sophie sings her new album, La Vie moderne (Barclay), near a campfire. Not real flames, but radiant LED bulbs that sometimes take on the appearance of lightsabers from Star Wars. She has set herself the goal of “gathering, warming, and singing together” with this ninth disc, an almost vital urgency, born of our uncertain times where confinement and “modern life” have established all kinds of distances, d distance and loneliness.
Songs that tell a story, testifying as a memoirist to the ills and hopes of our society, have become rare. Those of La Grande Sophie shine with a “classic” brilliance in the lineage of the great “B” founders, Barbara, Brassens, Brel. “In the spirit of a campfire, I took my guitar so that all my songs fit in guitar-voice only”, explains the composer, lyricist and singer.
This elegant simplicity gives the impression that she speaks to us in confidence with her warm and harmonious voice, even if a solid instrumentation (bass, drums, guitars and piano) has been added in the studio. “I love to put the voices forward, not to overload, to keep only the necessary and to remove the frills. »
Guitar riffs and haiku-like lyrics
The theme of time runs through this album which captures everyday life on tonic guitar riffs. “The time I have left / The time you come / The time that is pressing / I have enough to write a novel”: this refrain sums up the point well. “With the health crisis, I have the impression that we have experienced an intense acceleration towards the future. Life goes even faster. I belong to two eras, the previous and the new. I don’t want to lose the old one while living nowadays”, confides the artist.
“A song has never changed the world, it makes it beautiful”
At 53, in a profession adept at youth, La Grande Sophie does not hide her age, she assumes it. “The body changes/In exchange/For what?/We didn’t ask for anything/Life is short/All around/About you/Did you see it pass? “, she chants in Modern Life. This flagship title, written like a haiku, supports an intense pop-folk rhythm. “You know, modern life reminds me/That we’re all numbers. Embracing the era, the artist observes it with empathetic melancholy.
No despair for all that in this woman with a true voice, with combative lucidity. “When you start to take on a patina,” she smiles, “society tends to push you to the edges. But we will all be old. I am very attentive to the elders, and I want to connect two generations, two eras. »
From its bluish cover, which the artist produced using the ancient technique of cyanotype, to the well-balanced sound of the synthesizers, La Vie moderne combines past and present. This mixture also takes place through the brewing of worried emotions in the face of a changing world and the ever-fresh joy of the impulses of the heart.
The Sea, radiant and languid, under the filiation of Charles Trenet
In a poetic and funny verb, the singer transcends reality. Intimate but committed, she sketches it in cinematographic vignettes in I don’t like to see people cry, a true novel of the big city. Celebrating The Power of Fiction, another of her songs, this outstanding melodist captures the spirit of the times to enchant it.
His sensitivity takes on universal accents in Together, written in an instant on March 16, 2020 to call for solidarity. Other compositions took a long time to emerge. Thus, Goodbye, title inspired by a dramatic false news, walked ten years before becoming a tender ballad.
Under the filiation of Charles Trenet, La Grande Sophie signs a solar song, with radiant lightness and languid swaying, La Mer. A wonder of strings and song, just to exalt beauty with sensuality.
“A song has never changed the world, it embellishes it, it embellishes it. This conviction maintained with style irrigates all his work. “I try to give people little pleasures, emotions, comfort, to console them, to bring a glimmer of hope,” she confides. This inner light will shine in concert this spring.
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“LGS”, speech and music
July 18, 1969. Birth of Sophie Huriaux, a nurse mother and a steelworker father. Childhood in the Bouches-du-Rhône, studies at the Beaux-Arts in Marseille.
1990. Beginnings in Paris. La Grande Sophie (aka LGS) is making a name for herself on the independent scene.
2004. And if it was me, his 3rd album, reveals it with Du courage and We knew. Victory of the music of the revelation stage 2005.
2010. The Les Françoises supergroup was founded in Printemps de Bourges with LGS, Jeanne Cherhal, Camille, Olivia Ruiz, Emily Loizeau and Rosemary Standley.
2019. Composed the soundtrack for Disparition disturbing, a France 2 series.
2023.Modern Life, 9th album, released by Barclay. Tour from March.
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