What remains today of "Marquesas", the latest album Brel? First the will of one of the most volcanic personalities of French song, a marathon of shows (the "convict galas") which ignited theaters in living characters as theatrically is intense, sweating like a hyena and gesticulating like a sad clown. The facts are simple: a singer will rarely expressed his feelings with as much sincerity, faith and seriousness that the great Jacques. Brel embraced his art in the transcendental stage of a human way so that it is even difficult to talk almost without emotion. Then a taste for writing intact, with a collection of twelve songs, the texts have lost none of their flavor and their bite, thirty years later. Brel just touches one last time, with energy and humor. The old anti-clerical spirit and wary of religious precepts still keeping watch, his uncompromising criticism but mixed with unfailing tenderness for his characters always present. Brel sign in the Marquesas some terribly endearing peaks ("Jaurès", "Orly", "The City With asleep", "Les Marquises") with a varied orchestration (guitar, piano, drums, but also saxophone, trumpet, accordion) and production giving the sound a surprising aeration, which makes "Les Marquises" more resistant to time than more dated productions. And then there is this island Marquesas, where time has stopped. The man knows himself condemned to a fatal outcome. Yet, energy and enthusiasm, but also lucidity he breathes in this last disc give it a je ne sais quoi of more shocking and poignant as his other records. Long last we will live toward "Marquesas": "Do you want me to say / Whining is not set / the Marquesas", where there was also only one taken at the recording sessions. "Les Marquises" are there to remind us how Brel held through the same watchful eye and vigilant peers, without any malice or cynicism, but always with an almost unreasonable thirst for justice and the tenderness of a humanity infinite.
