The Magnificent Loser explores life after Mustang in snapshots where he showcases his unrivaled storytelling talent.
Permanent Cinema is not Jean Felzine’s first dalliance outside his group, nor his first solo. But, announced last February by a Goodbye that accompanied the statement formalizing Mustang’s end and settling accounts with its leader (“We did some good things, but I wasn’t easy to deal with”), the record resets the counters with troubling honesty.
More analogic (even organic, with a few whistling sounds and mouth noises) than Chord Memory (2023), Permanent Cinema establishes Jean Felzine as a major songwriter, in the vein of Yves Simon or Renaud, for whom he effectively remakes the title Amoureux de Paname during a Paris Paris Paris that is perverted by ragtime and a plot twist that reveals the narrator’s misery (emotional as well as economic); his bitter torch is immediately picked up by Arezki in the superbly carved portrait of a homeless man in the middle of a poker hand.
Jean Felzine Always Comes Out on Top
Jean Felzine speaks of himself as a character (the snapshots from Je sème), and when he creates characters he seems to be speaking of himself: without the heavy guitars and synthesizers of Mustang, his lyrics inevitably feel like naked truths, until the striking final Un homme peut-être. From flirting with self-indulgence (a Dirty Talk that could, if misread, wrap up the “we can’t say anything more”), Felzine always manages to come out on top, and uses the moment to experiment with the long-form song: the well-crafted Medicine Show. The Magnificent Loser has something irreducible about him—and in his voice that blend of sharpness and velvet perfectly suits his writing.
Permanent Cinema (Vietnam/Wagram). Out on September 18.
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