INTERVIEW
How long was Stephan Eicher singing on the album Silence, released in 1987. To return with a new studio record, the singer has indeed put a little time, "seven years" exactly. "At my age, (59, ed.), It's long," whispered the artist on Saturday at the microphone of Patrick Cohen. Guest of the program It's happened this week , he traced the hatching of his album, Homeless Songs , released Friday.
"Songs that do not know where to sleep"
If the time could seem long, it is because Stephan Eicher was in conflict with his record company. The page now turned, the Swiss presents fourteen new songs in this opus whose title must be heard as a compilation "of songs that do not know where to sleep (...) Do they have a place in the radio? In the media? At record companies? On streaming platforms? I have doubts ,? announces the singer.
If you are tempted to make room for Stéphane Eicher's songs at home, know that in the panel of novelties, is Broken , a song of 40 small seconds. "Everything is broken and everything is said," commented the artist. "This is one of the few songs that survived the first version of Homeless Songs in 2015," when the singer was in the middle of a legal dispute. Titles also include a trio with Axelle Red and Miossec, songs in Bern, and Swiss-German poems by Loosli, "things a little exotic," says the singer.
A record that accompanies "a coffee in bed"
What has not changed, however, is his collaboration with Philippe Dijan as a lyricist on his songs in French. "It's really like a movie script, Philippe has quietly written a text in his corner, he gives it to me and I live with it, I usually stick it to the wall where I work, I look at them", describes the singer who waits for the text to call him "as if he were doing 'pssttt'" to compose and finalize.
The titles of this album are revealed under a cover in the shape of a portrait blurred by the rain. Not that of Stephan Eicher, no, but the melancholy image of Greta Garbo. "This face watched me write, record," says the singer who advises as a prescription, not to listen to this album for lunch in peace, but to enjoy ... "coffee in bed" with a sweet melancholy.