Sad to hear of the passing of Jean-Louis Murat at the age of 71, one of France’s finest singer- songwriters.
While his late 80s/early 90s releases Cheyenne Autumn and >Le
Manteau de pluie are rightly regarded as among his finest releases,
I’ve always loved Murat Live. I purchased it not long after it came out
and it’s probably the Murat album I return to the most often. I may not
have always kept up with his every release, but I have kept on coming back to Murat Live since I bought it.
I’ll admit it was one of the albums that opened up the possibilities
of French music to me. I was already familiar with the likes of Trust from my
earlier metal listening years, and since then others ranging from Noir Desir to
Jarre via Gainsbourg and Christophe and Brel had broadened my musical horizons,
but when I came to Murat Live it
seemed to be exactly what I needed to be listening to.
By the time I picked it up - it must have been 1996 - I was well
into considering myself a musical sophisticate. I was into the likes of Nick
Cave and Leonard Cohen, I was informed by Dylan and Tom Wait, listening to jazz
and electronics. I’m pretty sure I picked up Murat Live in Paris the same day I bought the then-newly-released Klaus
Schulze Are You Sequenced. I had
eagerly graduated from metal to a broader taster in indie, prog, art rock, jazz
and the like through a thorough interrogation of the back catalogues of the usual
suspects.
I was probably insufferable.
Murat Live turned my
head around. He had the style and the sound, delivering something that the
likes of Daniel Lanois had promised, a stripped-down organic rawness that while
uncluttered and direct wasn’t afraid to use a sophisticated colour palette where
it was needed. Combine this with poetry at a Cave or Cohen level and I was
intoxicated. While these ingredients could easily be combined into bland
sophistication or pretentious arrogance, the music retained a compelling
urgency and approachability.
I can only think of a couple of times I’ve bought an album without hearing it before and it’s had such an impact on me. Scott Walker sings Jacques Brel and Miles Davis The Columbia Years were two of those occasions. Murat Live was another. I’d heard his cover of Cohen’s Avalanche on the Les Inrocks-curated I’m Your Fan collection and was curious to hear more, his French version taking one of Cohen’s more enigmatically poetic works to another level and making it somehow his song.
The Murat Live album immediately fascinated me. It still does. Seemingly without effort it outmanoeuvred my youthful pretensions and challenged my assumptions. “You think that stuff you’re listening to is cool? Check this out!” it seemed to say. “Here’s something you’ve not read about in the NME that you’ll love” It added enthusiastically, like an older brother with a mysterious collection of records you’ve never seen before or heard on the radio.
There was no point being precious or acting superior
about music, Murat Live showed there
was something you’d probably love out there that you just hadn’t heard
yet.
That music like this existed almost without any recognition in the
anglosphere disappointed me, I would continue to return to Murat Live as proof of what seemed like a secret only a few of us
knew about, that music in France could be everything I was hoping music could
be. Another of the experiences that would eventually lead to me writing and
thinking about French music and trying to share this enthusiasm.
I may not have followed Murat’s releases with the loyalty one might expect given my reaction to Murat Live but I had a wider field now. What I knew before about music before wasn’t wrong, but it was only the start. It would always only ever be the start of a movie with no closing credits but with an incredible cast and no end of plot twists.
There
were artists like Dominique A, Alain Bashung, Grand Corps Malade, Damien Saez
as well as the likes of Louise Attaque as well as an exploding French rap scene
to dive into. Murat Live probably finally persuaded me that there was astonishing
work coming out in France, and I was unafraid to embrace it
I was surprised to read Murat had died at 71. He always seemed
younger than that, a bit older than me but far from old. But we’re all older
than we think. I’m no longer the young guy slouching from disquaire to librairie
in Paris. I’ll listen to the album again and rather than wallow in nostalgia for
those days, I’ll also listen to something new that’s come out in France that I’ve
never heard before.
Picture of Jean-Louis Murat in 2010 by Vincent Desjardins
