Fusées… Les astres… Quitter la ville… Falaise… Les ombres…Puisque tu pars… It’s a question of departure, escape, rupture, distance, fear of the dark. In a world in total regression, increasingly prone to intolerance, exclusion and violence, Laura Cahen’s work oscillates between intimacy and the search for a safe, propitious place. It is also a question of fantasized or autobiographical relationships between women of good will, of fictional or real break-ups.
What is real and what is fictional is of little importance in this case. It’s enough to understand that the narrator of all these chansonnier tableaux wishes to escape our world on the brink of darkness by building a cocoon sheltered from the elements. This is a private, intimate experience, fully aware of the curses on the horizon. The literary territory here is meticulous, uncluttered, with affects clearly circumscribed, so all that’s left is to savor it.
De l’autre côté is the title of a superb album of French songs with bold arrangements and effective melodic hooks. It’s hardly surprising that the main songwriter cites Laura Marling, Adriane Lenker (Big Thief) and Aldous Harding among her major influences. She claims to be more of an Anglo-Saxon songwriter, which is why she recorded her new opus in London.
Laura Cahen made Deux Zelles and then solo albums: Nord in 2017, Une fille in 2021, the compilation Des filles in 2023, and here’s De l’autre côté in January 2025. This chamber folk tinged with dream pop features the work of Mike Lindsay (Tunng, Laura Marling, Buck65, etc.), a producer inspired by cyber-folk, as well as Josephine Stephenson (Damon Albarn, Arctic Monkeys), whose background in contemporary music furnishes and decorates every nook and cranny of these songs by Laura Cahen. There’s no denying that it’s good to be on the other side of the fence, but you’ve just got to get there.
