Oldelaf - Délires Chroniques

Long live creation on the radio!
You probably all know the famous "Tristitude" from him. In my opinion, his best album was the one that followed, Dimanche, both funny and tender, almost flawless.
And then? 3 more or less disappointing albums, no longer very funny or very tender, with a few exceptions (like "Mais les Enfants", intelligently committed).
I was starting to lose my faith in him, and that's when I stumbled upon some of his radio appearances, on Rire et Chansons. One new song a day for several months, then one a week. Impromptu and unpretentious, these little delusions drew good laughs from me: Oldelaf had got his mojo back.

The result is this album, a kind of "best of" his radio releases, rearranged for the occasion. That does it for me! From the irresistible "Burnou" to hard-to-live-with names like "Luc", or "Ph'lippe" (when you have a conshern of elocushion), from people who took German as 1st foreign language ("Allemand en LV1") to groups of young people ("Les Groupes de Jeunes"), everything goes into laughter, including more serious subjects such as Alzheimer's disease, migrants and "Afghans". To be taken ironically obviously. With incredible situations and puns in shambles.

Only track to throw away, in my opinion, "Peter Dinklage" seems to be the result of a little crazy idea that breathing helium would give – supposedly – a dwarf's voice (!?) Personally, I find the result just stupid and nasty and it doesn't make me laugh, even ironically. Let's move on.

Let's rather revel in his reggae parody ("Babylone"), which pinpoints the sham Rastas, with absolutely all the clichés and sound motifs of the genre, nothing is missing, it's perfect.

In terms of music and arrangements, there is no reason to proclaim the genius, obviously this is not the objective, which is rather to reinforce the comic effect. For example with a very cheap Bontempi solo, a real-fake romantic ballad ("Tu Me Parles"), and all those "little things in-between" in which Oldelaf excels. I can't get over it.

But he is not going to stop there, since he has joined Nagui's radio programme on France Inter for more than a year. Long live creation on the radio!