Solann - Si on Sombre ce sera Beau

You may have heard of her.
Her name is Solann. With a dot under the o as if under her eyes.
This young woman, who is currently experiencing a meteoric rise, was in fact destined for the theater. It was only when Covid came along that she turned to singing instead. Good!

About the musical style, her resemblance to Pomme (at least, the one of the beginning) is obvious: beautiful and very melodious voice, high vocalizations, often stripped-down arrangements, heady choruses. And even in the addressed themes (insomnia, witch, bird, death).
But this admirer of Barbara and Anne Sylvestre goes further, developing her texts like sessions with a shrink (like her friend Zaho de Sagazan), with an exacerbated feminism and guilt ("Rome", "Les Draps").
And an omnipresent metaphor for hunger. For she has the guts ("Petit Corps").

The title of her album, Si on Sombre ce sera Beau ("If we Sink it’ll be Beautiful"), has a double meaning: literal (aesthetics of the fall) and figurative.
And then Si On Sombre makes S.O.S.! Amazing, isn't it?

Browsing the record I have the impression that we are faced with 2 kinds of songs: soft and deep songs, beautiful melody, most often accompanied by drops of ukulele, her favorite instrument, and more upbeat songs with more fleshed out accompaniments and lyrics not always super understandable immediately.
And no "intermediate" songs.

Striking, "Les Draps" starts almost like a na-na-na-na-na-na-na nursery rhyme... except that. Wait, but what is she talking about here? Isn't it...? Yes. Gulps. The lyrics shear us, while the arpeggio continues its implacable mechanism. It is impossible to get rid of it. If that's what she wanted to express, it's succeeded, more than necessary.
Here and there, small oriental accents appear, as in the pre-chorus of the very original "Les Ogres".
More classic in its construction, "L'Oiseau" sometimes reminds me of Philippe Chatel (oh yes) or Carla Bruni (oh no).

And what about the texts? From disillusioned observations about the powerful who dominate us ("Les Ogres", "Rome"), to the expectation of a reversal of the table that seems inevitable ("Comme les Animaux", "Tout Cramer"), through more personal or family thoughts ("Insomnie", "Mayrig", "Appelle-Moi Sorcière", "Marcher Droit"), this very dense debut album certainly conceals everything that Solann kept buried since childhood. We are very lucky to be able to access it, and to recognize ourselves in it eventually.
What will become of her after these first more than promising steps? You may hear of her for a long time to come.