The Marshals - Les Bruyères Session (2019)

The Bruyères Sessions, the fifth episode of a fascinating series and a new step in the life of the electric blues French combo The Marshals. A long-playing record related to the evocation of a place of origin, and which formalizes the exploration of a renewed sonic experience. Over the past years, the three musicians have consistently conjured up the inspiring Session ritual, to spark the Mojo of their vibrant, driven music. There is something intensely sensorial and subtly spiritual in this home-made desire to work together, stripped to the bare essentials, to better grasp these moments of unique truth.

To fathom the energy of a building lost in the middle of nowhere, at the imaginary crossroads of the famous intersection where everything might have started under a full moon. To turn the key and, right away, to breathe in the atmosphere. To touch the stones, to stroke the wood, to listen to the silent walls. But, above all, to set up a recording studio, where others have certainly eaten, partied, laughed and even cried. To plug in your guitar, to choose the right pair of drum sticks, to inhale deeply one last time before letting everything go. To wait for the right time, to feel that vibration in the air, that vibration that will never give its name, and, impolite as it is, that will come unannounced. You’d better be ready, when the skin of the bass drum beats the time, when distortion suddenly takes over the tempo and the harmonica answers unswervingly. Luckily, the recorder is on and the magic won’t be a simple memory.

Julien, Laurent and Thomas’s rough and contrasting music reveals itself more than ever in this remote, close-to-the-earth simplicity. Thousands of miles away, another land of toil gave birth, in the muggy heat of Southern USA, to one of the most fascinating popular expressions of the 20th century. Beyond the lyrics, the chords and this primal pulse, this story is also perpetuated by this new penetrating album, a human story, filled with doubts and melancholy, hope and anger, love and humanity. Worthy of the precious heritage left by this illegitimate son of the popular music of exile, the Marshals draw an imaginary line linking Tony Joe White and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “swamp rock” to Muddy Water’s “Electric Mud Version”. And yet, just like for every handmade drawing, the hand can slip at any moment and lose its path, carried away by its momentum and the giddy exhilaration of jam. Generous and inspired, the Bruyères Sessions thus confirm their well-deserved status of current French benchmark in terms of pure, sophisticated rock’n’roll, whilst unveiling new unexpected aspects of a heart-warming complicity that makes us want to listen to them all night long.