Volo - Chanson Française

What is Volo? Good French chanson (to the point that it’s even the title of the album). Intellectual, poetic, nostalgic, funny, involved, leftist.

Nothing revolutionary though: for this 5th studio album (in 17 years), the Volovitch brothers go on running through their style. 2 acoustic guitars, 2 similar voices. Sometimes together, sometimes answering each other. Almost nothing. But probably they became an old hand and got more maturity in writing style, be it concerning the lyrics or the melodic lines.
Thinking of it, a duo of bruvs, whose band name is a reduction of their family name, does that sound familiar?

Serge Gainsbourg said chanson was a minor art. Nice illustration here. But it’s in the small things that human can turn out big. (That’s my theory.) Actually, making it simple is difficult.

So let’s begin with the eponymous "Chanson Française", kind of warning to trendy international female singers, who all have a name ending with -a. Convenient for the rhymes. There are few chances yet that this warning reaches its targets on the other side of the Atlantic.

Afterwards the pieces alternate either in the sentimental/personal vein, by means of well-made arpeggios ("Petite Tête", "À mon Cou", "Rire aux Éclats"), or in the social/political vein ("J'Hésite", "Un Gars Honnête", "Tout Est Normal"), often with a tad punchier struck chords.

You get out of this album in peace with yourself. Volo has risen with lightness into a quality French chanson, above the average, far from hitting rock bottom. For at bottom, what is Volo?