Bloody G8 summits, the return of Aids in the back-rooms, the small time investors who make money out of people loosing their jobs, the illegal immigrants of the GISTI (Groupe d'Information et de Soutien aux Immigrés) who are still dragging their feet in the French bureaucracy. Knowing Noir Desir's commitment and the motives for the revolt of these musicians whose nerves are on edge, we're betting on a new album that will be a flood of decibels and condemnation.

And yet it's with a quiet Enfant du Roi that the foursome from Bordeaux opens the ball Des Visages, des figures. To the extent - were it not for this stripped orchestration - that we could take Bertrand Cantat's reedy voice for that of a Tiersen or an aged Christophe. Rousing stanzas to the glory of offspring around which everything's just vanity, this song is moulded from touching paternal love.

From this moment on we expect an album which is more peaceful where Cantat stops his (fragile) voice from trying to compete with the decibels from Teyssot-Gay's guitar. But if the decibels have for the most part been left in the studio's dressing room, the revolt still brews and the complaints are lining up. Cantat's lyrics book is full of them. Starting with those by Leo Ferré. The old anarchist would probably have smiled with content in seeing his spiritual sons doing Des armes. With organs in the twilight and an apocalyptic wind, Cantat's voice rips apart this musical landscape: «Des armes, des armes, des armes/ Et des poètes de service à la gâchette / Pour mettre le feu aux dernières cigarettes / Au bout d'un vers français brillant comme une larme».

The profession of faith is spoken. We can feel the rising revolt in this voice that teases his Ferré to the point of mimicry. We sense that in concert this song could cause emotional damage amongst an audience quick to read between the lines and take the cry for arms to the letter.

But who are these verses against? Are they against «Claudia Schiffer qui dit qu'elle a même pas peur» ? (Le Grand Incendie). Is it against «ce bonheur qui est partout, ça déborde même, c'est fou !» ? (Son Style 1). There's hardly any answer, if it's not even the strong certainties of this group which scarcely weigh a thing in a world where airplanes fall on buildings. « Il paraît que la blanche colombe a trois tonnes de plombs dans l'aile » Cantat wrote with premonition "A l'envers a l'endroit" In this same tune we can hear the German Stukas roaring above Guernica while the singer shouts out « No pasaran… sous les fourches Caudines / A l'envers à l'endroit».

A stitch inside out a stitch rightside out, this sumptuous album knits and unknits all convictions, and leads one to doubt, as of Cantat's cartesianness one who doubts and therefore is lost: «Pourras-tu le faire ? Pourras-tu le dire ? Tu dois tout essayer / Tu dois devenir / Tu dois voir plus loin / Tu dois revenir / Egaré en chemin, tu verras le pire / Pour trouver le sud, sans perdre le Nord / I'm lost».

Lost, everyone is a little bit listening to this album yet each one of us will dive back into it with delight in as much as the words of Noir Désir are (im)pertinent, as this music is surrounded by an indescribable hope, a suppressed anger and a curbed revolt which is familiar to us and which seduces us. As the voice of Brigitte Fontaine is familiar to us which appears on the last opus, a diatribe more than twenty three minutes long with a screaming saxophone(that of the Hungarian Akosh) and a chainsaw turned into a string and chain instrument! Fontaine and Cantat thrash in unison L'Europe : «Maquerelle des ballets roses / Europe des lumières et des ténèbres / au charme technocrate.» The old world, a monstrous entity is swollen to which Noir Désir addresses itself and concludes in these words: «Quelque chose est resté en travers de la gorge / Et nous voulons cracher, c'est la moindre des choses / Mais vous pouvez , Madame, vous adresser à nous / Car tout n'est pas perdu, non ! Tout n'est pas perdu de vos mythes d'aurore / Ici le soleil brille pour tous / Et on y croit !».

Frédéric Garat

Des visages, des figures (Barclay)