Menu

Album review


The new-look Dick Rivers

L’homme sans âge


Paris 

30/07/2008 - 

Dick Rivers, the French sixties star renowned for his Elvis-style posturing and his fascination with rock'n'roll, is a changed man. His new album, L’homme sans âge (featuring music and lyrics by Joseph d’Anvers) finds the former rocker tapping into a melancholy country vein.

print

send

react



The moody black-and-white portrait on the cover of Dick Rivers' new album says it all. Long black jacket, cowboy boots and a man standing alone with his shadow on an anonymous city pavement. The picture of urban solitude! Gone are the days when Dick Rivers dressed up to dazzle as the French Elvis Presley. These days, it seems, he is more interested in channelling a late Johnny Cash vibe (circa American Recordings). At first glance, this might come across as almost laughable. But after a few listens to the faultless tracks on L'Homme sans âge Dick Rivers will have you believing in his conversion, too.

Hervé Fornieri - who was born in the southern French city of Nice and launched his career assuming the name of a film character played by Elvis - recently made a comeback on the French music scene, inviting prestigious young artists such as Mickey 3D and -M- to collaborate on his last album. This time round, Rivers has recruited the services of another young French talent, Joseph d’Anvers, a  songwriter and musician who may not be widely known on the French mainstream but is greatly respected in music circles. Young Monsieur d'Anvers has not only written material for cult French music icon Bashung, but he has also released two critically acclaimed albums in his own right. And now he has masterminded an album for Rivers that fits the latter's timeless vocals like the proverbial glove.

The twelve songs on L'Homme sans âge all have a vaguely narrative edge, Rivers evoking the interconnected themes of loneliness (Sur le toit du monde), travelling (Je reviens) and the passing of time in a succession of cinematic-style images borrowed from American film history. It is no coincidence that Rivers presents himself as "the lonesome cow-boy" on La voie des anges! Right from the start of his career it has been clear that this is one Gallic singer who has been completely obsessed with Americana. And, after 47 years in the music business, Rivers' fascination for the U.S. shows no sign of fading - although his American Dream is obviously a little nostalgia-tinged now.

Rivers' charismatic vocals, set off against a background of brooding violins and western-style guitars, are rendered raw, deep and manfully sensitive on L'Homme sans âge. Singing with his characteristic American modulations, Rivers brings out the essential melancholy of the ageing process with an intensity that does not once let up until the album sounds its final note. In short, the former lead singer of Les Chats Sauvages has rarely given as great a vocal performance as this. The aptly-named L'homme sans âge (The man with no age) could well be Dick Rivers' finest work yet.


 Listen to an extract from Attache-moi

Dick Rivers L’Homme sans âge (EMI) 2008

2 & 3 December at L’Alhambra (Paris)


Jérôme   Pichon