Tag: Nicolas Michaux Parrot

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Nicolas Michaux Releases a Slinky and Brooding Meditation on Economic Anxiousness and Uncertainty

I’ve written a bit about, Brussels-born singer/songwriter, guitarist and producer Nicolas Michaux over the past couple of months. Currently splitting his time between Brussels and Samsø, Denmark, Michaux, who writes and sings in both English and French, has received attention across Europe for crafting as sound that features elements of French chanson, 60s British rock and early New Wave, guided by a distinctly personal spirit and centered around lush and textured production.

Michaux’s sophomore album Amour Colére (which translates into English as Love Anger) is slated for a Friday release through Capitane Records. The album continues the Belgian artist’s ongoing collaboration with Morgan Vigilante — and as you may recall, Michaux and Capitane Record have released three singles off the album to rapturous critical applause: “Harvesters,” which was praised by The Line of Best Fit, “Nos Retrouvallies.” a lush and plaintive song that touches upon classic French chanson themes of love, grief, separation and reunion (either in this world or in the afterlife) and “Parrot,” arguably the album’s funkiest song, which sounds as though it drew influence from Fear of Music-era Talking Heads and Afro pop, while discussing the alienation and paralysis many of us feel in the midst of a morally bankrupt, stupid, cruel world that robs people of their humanity and decency.

“Enemies,” Amour Colére’s fourth single is a slinky and brooding New Wave number featuring shimmering reverb-drenched guitars, a sinuous bass line and a taut four-on-the four that subtly nods at Tom Petty’s “Refugee” but centered around a familiar (and age-old) economic and career-based anxiety and frustration. Much of our existence is deterministic and influenced by larger (and highly indifferent) forces — and the song points that out with a steely-eyed clarity. Interestingly, “Enemies” is influenced by the work of French sociologist Bernard Friot, a historian of social security and advocate for lifetime salary with the song finding Michaux reflecting upon Friot’s work and his own financial situation.

“When you turn 30 and have a child, being broke becomes less and less fun,” Michaux says in press notes. “At the time of writing, we were looking for a place to live and the violence of the housing market took me by the throat. In writing about slavery, Marguerite Yourcenar said that a regime is often most excessive in its cruelty and injustice in its last days. I sometimes get the impression that it’s the same kind of historical scenario we are currently experiencing with the slow agony of capitalism.”

Directed by Thomas de Hemptinne and Nicolas Michaux, the recently released video for “Enemies” is brooding, surreal and impressionistic visual that captures the anxious uncertainty, the loneliness and fear of both the musicians, who worked together during pandemic-related lockdowns and simultaneously that of the viewer.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Brussels’ Nicolas Michaux Returns with the Incisive and Funky “Parrot”

Nicolas Michaux is a Brussels-born singer/songwriter, guitarist and producer, who currently splits his time between Brussels and Samsø, Denmark. Writing and singing material in both English and French, Michaux has received attention for crafting a sound that meshes elements of French chanson, 60s British rock and early New Wave, guided by a distinctly personal spirit and centered around lush and textured production. 

Earlier this year, Michaux released “Harvesters, the first bit of original material from the Belgian artist since 2016’s À la vie à la mort to critical praise from from  The Line of Best Fit. Building upon the momentum of “Harvesters,” Michaux released “Nos Retrouvallies.”  Continuing his ongoing collaboration with Morgan Vigilante, the lush and plaintive track touches upon classic French chanson themes of love, grief, separation and reunion — either in this world or in the afterlife — in a way that’s simultaneously charming and heartbreaking. 

Both “Harvesters” and “Nos Retrouvailles” will appear on Michaux’s forthcoming album Amour Colére, which is slated for a September 25, 2020 release through Capitane Records. Amour Colére’s third and latest single “Parrot” is a long-time staple of the Belgian artist’s live set — and it may arguably be the funkiest song off the forthcoming album. Centered around a strutting bass line, stuttering four-on-the-floor and  shimmering and looping guitar lines, “Parrot” recalls Fear of Music-era Talking Heads and Afro pop. But at its core the song talks about the alienation and paralysis that many of us feel in the midst of a morally bankrupt, stupid, cruel world, of a globalized economy that exploits and destroys everything in its path, of a global mass media and so on. “It’s a frontal attack against the conformist and cowardly part that lies in us all,” Michaux says of the song. 

Directed by visual artist Yoann Stehr, the recently released video for “Parrot,” is an  montage of newsreel images taken from the Internet, looped and edited in time to the song’s infectious groove. In many ways, the video can conceivably be titled “2020 In Your Face” or “The End of Our World as We Know It” but the key thing is that it’s an unsettling juxtapositions of familiar images in which the dominant figures of our world — the heads of state, the capitalists, the police officers — have their penchant for greed, destruction and exploration revealed to all. Of course, a new guard that includes Yellow Vests, BLM, feminists, ecologists an da host of others have risen up to combat the old ways and bring about a new way, saving what can still be saved. It’s desperate times y’all but on occasion there’s still hope that right and goodness could win.