Without really doing it on purpose, Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine carefully escapes pandemic constraints. His current acoustic tour is taking place in medium-sized rooms, all seated, which will be the case on Thursday January 20 at the Barrière casino-theater in Toulouse. He will complete it in 2023, in a more rock version (and with a list of different songs) in the Zéniths de France. This gave him time to explore in detail his latest album, the excellent “Géographie du vide”, in which several composers, also singers, collaborated in an elective family outing. “There are two ways to create compositions, explains Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine. For a long time, I distribute my texts to certain musicians so that they propose music. This is the case here of JP Nataf, Nosfell and Arman Méliès, for whom I had a crush. Conversely, Marc Perier and Joseph d’Anvers submitted music to me and I had to imagine texts to go with it. This way of doing has the advantage of forcing me to move away from the structures of French songs, of allowing me to wander in the Anglo-Saxon way. »
Thiéfaine’s new songs are like the old ones, bursting with lyrical formulas and astonishing word associations. What manifests in him an intact jubilation for writing.

“I like to create images”

“It is in this fundamental exercise that I really feel like an artist. I like to create images, which is undoubtedly linked to my first vocation as a painter, which was quickly abandoned. Why do people know by heart the words of the Madmen and the losers? Because of the pictures. A song lasts three minutes. It’s short, you have to go very quickly. Reflect on words that come together and at the same time fight each other; that’s why I like oxymorons so much. »
We find in Thiéfaine the “vertigo of passions”, of “wounded loves”, of “lost lovers”. So many variations on love, an eternal subject. “Love remains a major theme. The love life is very complicated when you are an artist: you have a solitary and independent way of life. It inspires me. But my approach remains intuitive, I just try to understand what is going on in my unconscious. It is not after an analysis that one writes a song: it would be completely useless! »

“My favorites”

A book
“Jean-Charles Chapuzet titled his latest book The Cry of the Stork (Laffont). It’s an image because storks don’t cry. The writer always starts from his story, which he diverts to tell today’s Hungary here (through the crossing of a village by a history teacher and his two children, editor’s note). »
An album
“I like with Arman Méliès the atmosphere he creates with his songs. This is still the case with his album Laurel Canyon, released last year. He embarks us on something disturbing and melancholic. Everything I wanted for my songs Black Page and How many days still. »
Movies
“I rather like the classics of the cinema, those which have a particular poetry. I have recently seen several Truffauts that I had discovered when I was a student. Don’t ask me for titles, I’m very bad at lists! I also have a Bergman box set of around thirty DVDs that I revisit every two to three years. I need to immerse myself in my old passions. »

“Geography of the Void” album (Columbia/Sony Music). Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine in acoustic concert Thursday January 20 at 8:30 p.m. at the Barrière casino-theater (prices: from 45 to 65 euros). And at the Zénith de Toulouse on Saturday April 1, 2023 (prices: from 39 to 62 euros). More information on www.spectacles.bleucitron.net