Albin de la Simone has released his second album, Je vais changer. While his self-titled debut took three years and was the fruit of all-night sessions while on tour, the second took a few months of intense work in the studio. Albin was supported by a whole team of musicians, giving his work a collaborative dimension. "My role was smaller, I just did the singing. I'm in a band, and that whole group vibe is something I experience on stage. It was a real revelation just to sing." He also wanted to be clearer about what he was doing: "The first album had a more complicated form. I'm not a contemporary painter, I actually want to be understood." The guitar, which wasn't used on the first album, is now part of his musical world. "What I'm interested in is to accept the pop heritage that the guitar offers. I was worried about disappearing into the global culture that the guitar can represent. And I'm pretty pleased with how things turned out. I've made an album I'm happy with and that reflects myself, while using the guitar."

Albin's world

Albin de la Simone has by no means lost his identity, quite the opposite. The influence of well-known singers, with whom he has worked, has not stopped him from forging his own style. It's a style that is biting, witty, drolly comic. The guardian of this world, La Simone (who gets her own song on the album) is a hybrid creature. She's both maternal and a destroyer, and something of a "metaphor for existence". Just like this peculiar character, Albin's lyrics aren't like any others and combine strange contrasts.

Poetry and surrealism mix with verbal and physical violence: "This woman will continue/To finance her lacking body/To irradiate her faded blood/ To kneel in the woods/Love won't heal her" ("L'homme patient"). For Albin, "Saying sweet things at one moment and then something awful the next is the best way to represent the violence of life." The splenetic, dramatic tone is very part of the Simone style: "If I ever complain/Of my painful period/ If my spasms make me moan/Vomit and cry, my mother/You can't do anything. Albin refuses to sell a dream, he wants to "make people feel complex things, just like life is complex." The disturbing Notre homme explores the taboo subject of paedophilia. But Albin cultivates ambiguity with his ever-changing moods. There is humour and beat-driven melodies on songs like Non Merci, about nightmare evenings in the nightclub, or Demonia, about men in relationships and the fantasies they have. Tracks like these shed a little light-heartedness over the generally melancholy atmosphere of the album. His version of These Foolish Things (Ces mots stupides), originally sung by Nancy et Frank Sinatra, is crooned in a duet with Jeanne Cherhal, who brings a breath of fresh air to the proceedings.

But the album nonetheless reflects the wounds of adolescence and a certain darkness is always there.  The child has grown up on J'ai changé, the standout track of the album: "In my nappy I had red buttocks covered in talcum powder / My hair was oily and long / I used to be blond (…) You see, I've changed, I've changed / Don't you worry." He's grown up to be a teenager who is not comfortable in his own skin. "I hated being a teenager," he now says, "I was very ill at ease." It's a paradox because it was also a very creative period for Albin. He had a spontaneity that he is now trying to rediscover through his writing, to which he is now very committed. He still helps out friends in the studio, but doesn't tour any more. And he's happy at last! "A lot of people are nostalgic about being twenty. Personally, I think I'll be nostalgic about being thirty-five. This is the happiest period of my life."