On his sixth solo album, Ezéchiel Pailhès returns with a new collection of songs imbued with a sunny, wandering spirit.
A common emotion runs through the twelve songs of Sol. We hear expressions of bliss, nonchalance, or desire, sometimes tinged with gentleness or joy, which singer Ezéchiel Pailhès has always associated with the idea of a melancholic happiness ("Saudade" in Portuguese), a mood that permeates much of his music and songs, as well as Brazilian culture. Beyond this feeling, Ezéchiel evokes in his songs love, the passage of time, hope and lost illusions, moments of grace, the temptation of forgetting, escape, or desire, across twelve unique songs whose understated orchestrations blend acoustic and electronic instruments.
This originality undoubtedly stems from the way the artist has appropriated the Brazilian repertoire through these new songs. After Mélopée, his last album of songs released in 2022, and the instrumental Ventas Rumba released two years later, the artist reinvents and modernizes some of the finest works of MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) with this album, particularly a handful of classics (little known in our country) from the samba and bossa nova genres of the 1950s to 1970s, written or performed in their time by Vinícius de Moraes, João Gilberto, Tom Zé, Dorival Caymmi, João Donato, Os Tincoãs, and Ataulfo Alves.
The shift from Portuguese to French, and the choice of adaptation rather than simple cover versions, allowed him to invent a dynamic form of prosody and euphony (the musicality and harmonious combination of words) unlike any other in the current landscape of French song. “Some lyrics are simply translations from Portuguese, in an expanded version, let’s say. For others, I started with a single word, or a single phrase, to weave a completely new text that transported me elsewhere. I allowed myself a great deal of interpretive freedom, while preserving the humanist dimension of the original songs. I’ve always been deeply moved by the way Brazilians transform things through heightened emotions. I love this visceral and spontaneous country, which always seems to live under the influence of emotion. And above all, I love its music, both popular and unifying, which brings together all social classes.” This is music that is very political in that sense, but even more so utopian, made by the people and for the people.”
On this new album, however, the Frenchman wanted to avoid any clichés. This is why each song is built around a skillful balance between Ezéchiel’s piano and synthesizers and understated orchestrations of percussion, brass, bass, and cavaquinho (a type of small four-stringed guitar), recorded in Rio de Janeiro with two musicians who usually play alongside the legendary Caetono Veloso, Kainã Do Jêje and Alberto Continentino, joined by Thomas Harres, Antônio Neves, Eduardo Neves, and Gabriel Loddo.
France and Brazil have maintained a long cultural and musical relationship since the 1960s. First, because some Brazilians, like the most famous among them, Gilberto Gil, sought refuge in France during the dictatorship (1964-1985). But above all, because French music quickly embraced the richness and ingenuity of bossa nova and samba, translating and reinventing them in the language of Molière. This is evidenced by the albums and hits of Henri Salvador, George Moustaki, Pierre Barouh, Pierre Vassiliu, and Claude Nougaro during the 1960s and 70s, all of whom drew from the MPB repertoire.
Fifty years later, Ezéchiel Pailhès, with his album SOL, also reinvents this rich legacy of Franco-Brazilian friendship, with a personality and a modernism that rival those of his predecessors.
