She passages at Le Rocher illustrate the rather meteoric rise of Clara Ysé. “We did all the rooms at your house,” she smiles. The music room around the EP, the beautiful room 650 a year ago for the album and here is 1,200 this week: it’s crazy! » Long awaited and worked on, her first opus “Oceano Nox”, released in the fall of 2023, won critical but also public acclaim, proof that we can be demanding and daring in the song format, and rally as many people as possible. The 32-year-old artist already has the aura of a (very) great.
La Clara is first and foremost a voice. Ample, powerful and soft, which soothes or inflames, soothes and inflames. “I worked on it from the age of 8 with the opera singer Yva Barthélémy,” she says. I knew quickly that music was going to be my backbone. » The chapel of classical will not lock her up: the teenager then young adult explores with passion in South American melodies, Greek folklore but also electro. “Today I like Kendrick Lamar as much as Rosalia, November Ultra as much as Léonie Pernet: hybrid projects in fact. The hybrid magnifies the music. »
Barbaresque
On the old side, we remember Janis Joplin, Mercedes Sosa, Nina Hagen or the masters of the song in the bottle of the house: Brel, Ferré and of course Barbara. “Of course”, because Clara Ysé seems to possess the same strengths, fragility, independence and freedom as the author of “My Men”. Same musical curiosity (we forget it too much with Barbara), same aromas of intensely pagan mass during concerts. Because the journey, already hair-raising in the headphones, is even more so on stage.
“This album was the culmination of a very long process of four years because, after having done everything on the EP, I looked for a long time for a director who would take me elsewhere,” notes the singer of “Souveraines”. She found it in the person of Ambroise Willaume, at the consoles of the most beautiful French pop (Luciani, Woodkid, Albin de la Simone…), but also composer-singer in Revolver or under his pseudonym Sage. Ultimately, ten songs which leave one quite panting, declining love(s), mourning (that in 2017 of his mother, the psychoanalyst and philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle), salute to women fighters of all kinds, and this fire which crosses the oceans night.
Five more songs
Electro but strings. A duduk (Armenian flute) but the cello of Sary Khalife. And from the heart, choirs. Ten flamboyant and intimate rides, enhanced with five new tracks in the expanded version released in November. “I had 15 songs that I really liked but I wanted a short album,” she explains. The 2024 bonuses are indeed just as royal, with “La Louve” in the lead. Almost annoying with so many talents, the holder of a master’s degree in philosophy is also already at the head of a novel (“Mise à feu”, 2021) and a collection of poems (“Vivante”, 2024). Close the ban? “I’m writing new songs,” she confides. Joy.
Friday November 22 (8:30 p.m.) in Cenon, Rocher de Palmer. 31 euros.
