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Laure Briard - Ne pas trop rester bleue (TES031)

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About The Release

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As a worthy heiress to Françoise Hardy, Margo Guyan and Vashti Bunyan, Laure Briard has created intimate albums between realism and poetry. Performing in the field of pop, garage rock and bossa nova, she weaves small pieces of psychedelic ye-ye where sweetness combines with the cruelty of our existence. Third Eye Stimuli is pleased to bring you Laure Briard's fourth LP, Ne pas trop rester bleue in collaboration with Midnight Special Records (FR).

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Not blue, then this record’s colour would be yellow maybe; the shade of the Californian sun as it sears the ochre desert of Joshua Tree, reputed for its icy nocturnal temperatures and its sweltering hot days. A two hour drive from the City of Angels, this remote national park is a no man’s land where space and time seem to stretch on and on. While the old gold rush mines lie seemingly untouched, we still find old guitars at the antique dealers in the Yucca Valley. An America both obsolete and haunted by its past legends. A fantasy. It is here that Laure Briard’s new album is born.

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It would take nearly three years to finish this new album. The labour was long, enriched by her travels, and in the end, liberating. Lighter and more optimistic than the broken destinies and disillusionments of Sur la piste de danse, Ne pas trop rester bleue follows an autobiographical story punctuated with encounters. It is a cathartic work that would allow Laure to free herself from her ghosts, all while conjuring up new ones. We find there the storytelling of Lee Hazlewood in “Magical Cowboy,” a tale of a solitary and broken-hearted cowboy; the shadows of the weary country poet Don Gibson; and those of Bobbie Gentry also figure in these new compositions. But it is above all Carole King who stands as a major influence. Following the example of the singer activist and New Yorker, Laure Briard produces country imbued with soul.

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Laure Briard gets closer and closer to the light, a journey that already began with Un peu plus d’amour s’il vous plaît, appearing in 2019, and continues in the video of the first clip “Ne pas trop rester bleue,” where the proliferation of the protagonist’s possible destinies are dizzying, as well as in “Me pardoner,” a song about liberating oneself from the past. If we had to compare her to more contemporary artists, we would have to look at Cate le Bon for the rough psychedelic pop, the airy pop songs of Aldous Harding for the romanticism, or the falsely naïve innocence of Laetitia Sadier.

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For the composition and the arrangements, this time Laure Briard kept her team to a strict minimum: we find her loyal sidekick Julien Gasc, and above all Vincent Guyot, a true partner who supported Laure during the entire creative process. Ne pas trop rester bleue contrasts with its predecessors with its soul sounds, its feminine choruses, and its string and brass arrangements. The track is fed with the energy of Tamla Motown singles that lit up the sixties. The album ends in a whirlwind of incantatory psychic rock with “Au diable le Coeur arraché,” suggesting a new elsewhere, a new chapter.

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Ne pas trop rester bleue is a timeless and warm record that does not lose the pop flavour of its predecessors. A radiant, optimistic record that transports us to fantastic regions of blinding light. A nice nose-thumbing to the current times, really. 

Released on February
10th, 2023

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Tracklist

 

1. The Smell of Your Hair
2. Ne pas trop rester bleue
3. Lady Adventurer
4. Sur mes joues rosées 
5. Not Evil
6. My Love Is Right
7. Magical Cowboy
8. Me pardonner
9. Ciel mer azur
10. Au diable le coeur arraché

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Credits

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All songs written by Laure Briard
Composed by Laure Briard (A3,A5,B1), Vincent Guyot (A1,A5,B2,B3,B4), Julien Gasc (A2,B5), Maxime Chamoux (A4)
All arrangements by Vincent Guyot except A2,B5 by Julien Gasc

Records & Merch

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