Double CD and Double DVD box set (DVD 1: the concert filmed at the Casino de Paris + DVD 2: Portrait fiction by Laetitia Masson + 2 x CD: original album La Superbe)

The release of an album by Benjamin Biolay is in a roundabout way a pretext for comparison with his colleagues on the new French scene. It's also an opportunity to take a little height, as the musical and textual language is in many respects superior to all-comers.

This double album La Superbe follows the diptych À l'origine / Trash Yéyé which saw him stir up darker themes. Melancholy, at the center of his work, is of course strongly present, and the stories of upset love are numerous and detailed ("August 15", "Miss Catastrophe" or "You are my love" on the first part).

Playing La Superbe is equivalent to listening to the soundtrack of a sentimental education that is renewed each time like so many different scenarios and music. A first part rich in arrangements and neat accompaniments (saxophone and theremin are summoned) is followed by a second more rhythmic and binary disc, closing the diary of a month or a year from "August 15" to "September 15".

The singer has changed nothing in the disillusioned style that makes his charm, between talk-over and strong refrains. Benjamin Biolay is at the rendezvous of his ambitions with an album that in no way usurps its title: La Superbe is the masterstroke long awaited on his part. Like what bad love stories make good works.