"Happy to be sad." This succinct phrase could describe what Casagrande, aka Nicolas Contant, manages to convey through his album "Villes Sauvages."
Eleven postcards from an emotional landscape certainly filled with doubt, but also, and above all, with joy.
From the tumult of these wild cities to the calm of rivers, from the (re)discovery of nature and life, Casagrande seems on this album to want to escape the vehemence of urban environments, to move away from the constant emulation created by crowds. We note the exceptional contributions of Armelle Pioline (singer of Holden and Superbravo), and his lifelong friend Zoé Colotis, front-woman of Caravan Palace.
This musical gamble, cleverly blending the urgency and smoothness of pop sound, thus breaks free from the past and looks straight ahead, eyeing the audacity of a Beck, the class of a Daho, and the light modernity of a Voyou.