Wickham, an Irish folk musician, has left a strong imprint on the album and Menteur, as a whole, is infused with traces of its multiple collaborators. Take Pauvre Garçon, for instance, a song based on wild but perfectly calibrated guitar riffs from Matthieu Chédid and hot bass lines powered out by Damien Lefèvre from the group Luke. As for the joint vocals on the track, these seem to have been simply made to go together! Daniel Darc and Cali may appear to be the oddest of oddball couples, but they are, in fact, perfectly complementary, two committed admirers of the female form united in their emotional troubles, two of life's sensualist losers teaming up for five minutes of pure musical pleasure.

"'Menteur' is an album where I decided I wasn't going to deny myself anything," explains Cali, "I met a lot of different people while I was out on the road. And this album was a way of making my musical fantasies come true, like the duet with Daniel Darc, for instance. We actually got in touch with Patti Smith (to guest on the track), but for one reason or another it didn't come off. What I liked about both artists is that there's a certain sexual ambiguity about them. At the end of the day it didn't really matter so much whether a man or a woman did the vocals...  When Daniel Darc came into the studio he had this absolutely angelic smile on his lips – and he left just the same way!"

The album Menteur comes full circle, too, with both the opening and closing track taking up the same cause. Qui se soucie de moi and Le vrai père both tap into the same theme, raising the thorny issue of equal rights for divorced fathers and mothers when it comes to their offspring – and reminding us that this kind of gender equality is still not a reality! Cali knows what he's talking about on this score. "I helped set up an association called 'L’amour parfait," the singer says, "It's a real cry from the heart! We organised this special day, 'Dads are equal to Mums', to try and raise awareness about the campaign and remind people that kids shouldn't be taken hostage by either parent."  

Divorce, broken hearts and broken homes are recurrent themes in Cali's work – which is, perhaps, why his songs appear to strike such a chord with his fans. While he was out on the road on his L’amour parfait tour, Cali recounts how concert-goers waited patiently to see him after the show just so they could tell him how much they identified with his songs. The singer receives some very personal fanmail, too. "I received this pretty disturbing letter from a young woman in hospital," he says, "who wrote to say that my first album had helped her through a lot in her life. Another woman wrote and told me she'd left her husband after listening to my song 'Elle m’a dit.' Then there was this guy who told me he'd asked his girlfriend to marry him with 'Pensons à l’avenir' playing in the background. I'm always surprised to hear where my songs end up – surprised, and at the same time very touched."

Cali's second album is very much a mixed emotional bag, containing raw anthems such as Je te souhaite à mon pire ennemi and the excellent Je ne vivrai pas sans toi, a track infused with a certain touch of Springsteen and Californian, Calexico-style Mexican influences. (The latter is a perfect model of a hit where lyrics were written simultaneously to the music). Interestingly, these raw outbursts stand back to back with minimalist masterpieces such as Roberta (a touching ballad where it takes precisely 1 minute and forty seconds before listeners learn that the object of the narrator's  affections is, in fact, 82).

"The song's actually about a woman who lives in the same village as me," Cali reveals, "What happened was her husband died and a few months later she started going out with this 30-year-old guy. She got an amazing amount of flak for that!" Cali is no stranger to criticism himself, detractors having denounced a certain lack of modesty on his debut album. "But it does me so much good to write about my life," the singer protests, "It's great to sit down and get everything out! What's more, with people who are important to me, like my sisters, these songs have helped me open up more about myself and talk about my parents who aren't around any more."

As for the album's title track, Menteur, Cali could be a sort of modern-day Prokofiev composing an adult version of Peter and the Wolf. The song's biting lyrics are mischievously enhanced by flutes, harpsichord, and the violin section of the "Grand Orchestre du Conservatoire de Perpignan." Questioned about the aptness of the track's title Menteur (Liar), Cali quips that he limits himself to the strict minimum wherever possible. "These days, I feel like an honest guy," he says, "And what could feel better than that?"