Le Vinyle Club Blue Vinyl Limited Edition Amour Colère - Nicolas Michaux

“There’s a bit of love in anger and vice versa…”

Even in interviews, Nicolas Michaux knows how to use his poetry to describe the world of his second album, released two years ago. A rare artist, with a discreet elegance that will warm the little music-loving hearts at Le Vinyle Club this coming winter…

But who is hiding behind this Amour Colère? A Belgian musician, more precisely from Liège, but adopted by Brussels,

37 years old, who sings of bitterness and romantic pain like no one else, with a bittersweet softness that rocks us while it upsets us. As a young student in Liège, he founded the group Eté 67, which enjoyed some success in Belgium and France. Released in 2016, his first solo album A La Vie, A La Mort left a mark, but it’s especially with this second album released in 2020 that Nicolas Michaux confirmed his talents as a songwriter, just as comfortable in French as in English.

Amour Colère is an extraordinary album, also transcending borders, as the musician's life has been shared for a few years between Belgium, primarily Brussels, and Denmark, his partner's country.

The artist has also found inspiration there: the minimalism of Amour Colère, so pleasing to our ears, likely draws its clean colours from the island of Samsø, a small island with 3000 inhabitants in Denmark, where the artist has settled with his family, in the great outdoors. Sometimes difficult to endure in winter, but ideal according to the artist “to focus on his music… the place, the climate [there] invites a certain simplicity and a search for minimalism.” In Danish, this is called hygge, a feeling of tranquility and well-being conducive to creative states: contemplation as a source of inspiration, which is generally effective.

Amour Colère is a little gem: ten songs, five in French and five in English, that swing between cries of rage voluptuously interpreted and love euphoria tinged with bitterness. Lots of love, as in “Harvesters”, “Nos Retrouvailles”, “Every Word”, but also a lot of anger: “Cancer”, a very modest piece yet so raw about illness, or “Enemies”, “Parrot”, about the foolishness of politicians and ecological anxiety. A tribute to Liège and urban life, more rock, as with “Factory Town”, almost an ode to Lou Reed so much that the riffs are "velvetian." There are absolutely no embellishments but rather silences that adorn this guitar and this warm, smooth voice. Special mention goes to “Une Seconde Chance”, a superb love song that could reconcile all fallen lovers…

Nicolas Michaux has found the right tone to exist between different musical genres, folk, indie-rock, and Anglo-Saxon dandyism. We plunge into these murky waters with delight as if being drawn into the abyss.

Amour Colère is a great record because it places us in that vaporous state worthy of great musical moments, demanding that we cut ourselves off from everything just to listen, to simply listen.

Marie-Laure Sitbon

Specifications

- Artist: NICOLAS MICHAUX

- Format: Vinyl

- Number of discs: 1