Nature rebuilds itself after hurricanes, but what about young girls? Without a moment's pause after adolescence, Adé climbed aboard Thérapie Taxi, a whirring trio with supersonic success, taking European stages by storm and rocking streaming and record sales charts for five blistering years. Lucid about the ephemeral endurance that the fuel of their insolent youth would grant them, the band had decided from the outset that the race would come to an end, and they'll stick with it, with no regrets but with the assurance of having accomplished the essential. Two albums, a farewell ep, songs that left their mark on a generation, thousands of memories of collective exaltation and not a cloud in the sky along the way, except that of COVID which led them to postpone their final road tour by a year. So by the time Thérapie Taxi play their final concert at Le Zénith in Paris in October 2021, Adé will already be well into their metamorphosis. A duet with Benjamin Biolay (Parc fermé) identified her in a different way, capable of different registers from those she had with the group. Once the hurricane had passed, nature put her back in her place. And the hazards of confinement gave rise to a desire to withdraw, alone with a guitar, writing and composing for days on end dozens of songs that she would not reveal, but which were a necessary prelude to this new adventure. From her whirlwind stint in the spotlight, she has retained a taste for fire and speed, and despite the hours stretching out during this slow year of 2020, she keeps going, stays the course, erases and starts again. The next songs will be the right ones.
Fifteen or so songs, this time presentable, emanated as if by magic. Once again, Adé, courted but serene and determined in her choices, found herself in a hurry, and it was at her home, tôt ou tard, that she chose to set down her bag, filled with notebooks in which she had pasted images, a kaleidoscope of inspirations, bits of fantasised settings, scribbled texts, furtive impressions, lists of names, films, records - in short, a whole portrait of her future album. She's a girl fully of 2022, who sometimes listens to music from 1922 (The Carter Family and the vibrant echo of the Appalachians) but composes and writes in the present, without nostalgia or fear of tomorrow, loves the snapshot of Instagram as much as the intimate warmth of paper, antediluvian country as much as contemporary pop, starts a sentence talking about Cat Power or Angus & Julia Stone and ends it praising Coldplay and Lorde. The voices of America's daughters, KT Tunstall and Shaina Twain in the past and Kacey Musgraves today, encourage her to free her own, far from the bouncy, teasing persona she embodied with the band, closer to who she is in life and how she has chosen to reinvent herself. To achieve this, once the songs were written, she proceeded in three phases. Adé in 3D.
First, she locked herself away in the studio with a trio of seasoned musicians from the French scene, undoubtedly the best on the circuit. Florian Gouëllo (drums), Laurent Verneret (bass) and François Poggio (guitar) will help her lay the foundations for her songs in autumn 2021. She then joined two members of the group Puggy, Romain Descampes and Egil 'Ziggy' Franzen, who had already worked with Yseult and Noé Preszow, in Belgium to co-produce this hybrid album, made up of songs imbued with authenticity but blown apart by technology, fiercely defying time and style.
Thirty years ago, Alain Bashung 'dared' to take French chanson from Memphis to Brussels (Osez Joséphine), and Adé is about to do the opposite, or almost. She had never been to the United States, but she dreamt of playing pedal steel, dobro, banjo, mandolin and harmonica. So she headed for Nashville, where with Romain Descampe she took up residence in the cosy Sound Emporium studios, where before her eminent folk and country figures, from Emmylou Harris to Willie Nelson, had rocked the halls. Three days in the company of locals Pat McGrath and Dan Dugmore and their roots instruments, under the watchful eye of Chad Carlson at the console (two Grammys on the mantelpiece for Taylor Swift's Fearless) were enough for Adé to fulfil this American dream in a hurry, which she extended with a road-trip from New Mexico to Los Angeles via the cinematic plains of Arizona. Images from the films Telma and Louise, Point Break, Cameron Crowe's Encounters in Elizabethtown and its insane soundtrack accompany this journey of initiation. Sydney Pollack's Le Cavalier électrique, starring Robert Redford, inspired Stéphane Barbato's music video for Tout savoir, the first single release from the album. "I'd say to myself that if I don't recognise myself, that if I'm not the same, it's perhaps thanks to me", she persuades herself, and she's so right.
Straddling the line between lush pop and futuristic country, Adé has found the right gallop, crossing the Amazon with accuracy, aplomb and a touch of candour, the many landscapes of love and its changing weather, its turbulent zones and its sunny lulls. In the atmosphere of a saloon lost under the moon, she sings, melancholically, "broken hearts wish you a happy new year", but the years ahead for Adé are sure to be radiant.
