Baptiste W. Hamon, Country

“People always laughed at me when I said I liked country music,” sings Baptiste Hamon humorously on one of the songs on his fourth album, simply entitled Country . Both a manifesto and a declaration of love for a musical genre still rather despised in our latitudes, this new album is a great success. At a time when Beyoncé is dabbling in the genre, and country albums by Lana Del ReyPost Malone and Ringo Starr, Baptiste Hamon may even be fashionable without having asked for it. If he’s not the first Frenchman to adopt the colors of country music (Eddy Mitchell or Alain Bashung have done it before him), he is the first to do it over the whole length of an album. The original songs are written by the thirty-year-old, and the covers (Eddy Mitchell, in fact, and Hugues Aufray) connect the young man to a tradition. The production is impeccable and the musicians’ playing totally in tune, not to mention Lony’s impeccable backing vocals. Quite simply, this invigorating, invigorating record is almost like Nashville, shaking up clichés and preconceptions. The heir to the great Townes Van Zandt or Kris Kristofferson is French. Let’s hope he triggers dozens of new vocations.

Elvis Costello, King of America and other Realms

In 1986, the scathing Englishman Elvis Costellowho had appeared on the London scene less than ten years earlier, struck a blow with the release of two of his best albums in quick succession. We could almost add his last great albums, so uneven has his output been since then. Blood and Chocolate and King of America. The latter benefits from a new reissue, almost twenty years after the first. Each of them (the first dates back to 1995) brings its share of bonuses, but none has been as rich as today’s edition. Fans who already own three editions of the disc will have to pay for a fourth. And what will they find? In addition to the original album, which has never sounded better, a plethora of fascinating documents. Breathtaking demos – special mention to I Hope You’re Happy Now, which evokes a previously unreleased track from Dylan period Blood on the Tracks – a live performance at London’s Albert Hall and a selection of the English songwriter’s collaborations recorded throughout his career. With this album, Costello explored traditional American popular music for the first time. It wasn’t Americana yet, but Costello was like Tintin in America, fascinated by a vast repertoire and guided in this task by T-Bone Burnett, the go-to man when it came to venturing into the waters of folk, country and gospel. The whole is enhanced by fascinating liner notes signed by the artist himself, a brilliant raconteur. A must-have.