Between adventurous French chanson and soft psychedelia, Gaétan Nonchalant’s second album, “Le Jazz,” invites listeners on a personal journey, unbound by any compass.
There are artists who move forward at an angle, never giving the impression that they are forcing the pace. Across his songs, Gaétan Nonchalant has built a universe all his own, perched somewhere between melancholy, absurdity and pop elegance. A soft madness that evokes as much Pierre Vassiliu as Richard Gotainer, with a pronounced taste for the strange, the unexpected, and the side roads. Three years after Changement de programme (2023) and a year after the EP Chansons d’hiver – Folklore & b-sides, Gaétan Nonchalant returns with Le Jazz, his second album, recorded at La Bergerie in the Corbières, with musician and producer Astrobal.
Eleven songs and a single ambition: to see how far these detours can take him. Guitars, Fender Rhodes, synths, pedal steel, flutes and saxophones compose a wide and pliant pop, threaded with French chanson, moving melodies and psychedelic folk, which seems to have traveled from a dreamt California of the 1960s. There is, moreover, in Gaétan Nonchalant something of Philippe Katerine (with whom he duetted on Champs de blés), parachuted to Laurel Canyon, his French songs in tow. A way to make the mundane coexist with the dream, the absurd with the melody, without ever sacrificing one for the other.
Une manière d’habiter le monde
The shift also happens in the voice. More upfront, it gives the songs a newfound assurance without dissolving their mist. On the sunny There’s a Bird, one might imagine Pierre Vassiliu crossing paths with Joni Mitchell; Perdu de vue conjures a French pop finely carved in a production that nods to Tyler, the Creator. La Lune, a small wonder of invention and simplicity, calls to mind Étienne Charry’s sonic vignettes. Behind these confluences, Astrobal and an impressive roster of musicians—Adrian Edeline, Vincent Guyot, Michelle Blades, Aaron M. Olson, among others—lend the record its lift and its sense of play.
But it is also the lyrics that give Le Jazz its light gravity. In Le Vent, he depicts himself as a “poor balancing act” who follows the wind at random. For him, uncertainties are never dead ends: they become landscapes. The ordinary begins to glitter, missteps begin to make sense.
That is where Le Jazz finds its most beautiful definition. Not in a musical genre, but in a way of inhabiting the world: with curiosity, humor, a touch of melancholy and a marked taste for detours. Gaétan Nonchalant does not know exactly where he is headed. He does know how to get there: through music, and with total freedom.
Le Jazz (Objet Disque/Kuroneko). Release on October 9.
