We saw Matthieu Chedid at the Sud de France Arena: a great snatch victory in extra time!

Who other than Matthieu Chedid could make you forget that at the same time the French football team was fighting for its place in the World Cup final? Well, this Wednesday, December 14, when the star went on stage at the Sud de France Arena, around 8:50 p.m., Deschamps’ eleven had scored for a while already but a match, we don’t teach you anything, it lasts four – Ninety minutes, not counting half-time and stoppage time, so we were allowed to stress.

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VIDEO. Estelle wins a competition and sings in duet with -M- on the stage of the Arena de Montpellier

7,000 fans dove into his Rêvalité

Yet at some point, we can’t tell you when, eh, what, no: you say that there is an important match, there, right away? Let me finish bawling the chorus of Which of us ? with my 7,000 chorister friends? Ah yes, so it must have been around this hit that we forgot all consideration for additional time to surrender to the present tense… It was the third track of the set, crazy how it went quick !

However, after having been a hit in the summer festivals (Aluna, Déferlantes and Nîmes), Matthieu Chedid was returning to the region as part of the Rêvalité Tour, large hall version, show inside. His show opened as one does with the eyes on a day off: gently, beautifully, still a little dreamlike, with Homea pretty ballad from his latest album that the artist, after having emerged from the iris of the beautiful almond-shaped eye in the background, tore with a Flying-V guitar riff, rocking the room in its revality.

A space tribute to David Bowie

After wondering which of them inspires the other (for the record: Matthieu Chedid and -M-, it’s both synonymous… and not the same), and a superb Fender Stratocaster solo as a question mark, he proposed a new way of answering by letting his bassist take the vocal lead in the introduction ofsensual wave, the next piece. But what a bass player: Gail Ann Dorsey, a star musician with superheroic charisma, not to say Wakandian, who for twenty years held the four-string for David Bowie.

A powerful instrumentalist coupled with a remarkable singer as we will be able to appreciate after three children’s songs quickly dispatched, quickly forgotten (well, we remember it then we balance: The Seine, Croc madam and Fellini). Arrived at this stage, it is no longer a question of vocalizing for the bassist but of singing… Life on Marsthe (inter)planetary tube of the man who came from elsewhere and had slipped it into his disc Hunky Dory. The cover is magnificent, sip of soul, and Matthieu Chedid, who for the occasion grabbed a Gibson SG, enjoys playing an epic chorus in the purest style of Mick Ronson. Since the appearance of -M-, the comparison with Ziggy Stardust has been on everyone’s mind, now it is also making it in the ears.

A long streak in the center of the pit

But once again, we will have to wait to have new good news from the stars, because it is the moment that the star chooses to check as he likes to do in all his tours, if there is one, star, and close to his public, eh: here is our artist perched on a small mobile platform which splits the pit to his beating heart to resume there with his American girlfriend also mobilized, Yours, a song by Joe Dassin mutated discoid cavalcade bristling with splinters of electric guitar.

The suite is logically solitary, acoustic, and applauded in the red: Face to face. Reassured as to the love of the crowd for him after twenty-five years of living together, he then made a little room on his pedestal for his eldest daughter Billie; an exclusive for Montpellier, he explains to us, his kid having just returned from London. They sing in duet The lucky star and Billyand as they are in the middle of us, no choice, we smile.

A class from the Marie-Curie school as a guest star

We also smile because it’s time for the revelation of the winner of the competition he is organizing during his tour: everyone can send in their little video project to get their place on stage on the piece Nombril . In Montpellier, it is neither one nor one winner but full: the CM1 class of the Marie-Curie school! The stage may be tough to get them all up, it’s a bit complicated, so it’s just their teacher Estelle who joins Matthieu Chedid… still on his stage deported to the pit, while the schoolchildren are at the best seats facing the stage, and clearly in heaven! Let’s bet it must have been weird to see their mistress sing a duet with the star, and dance with the same enthusiasm as the better half of the audience (but yes, gentlemen, admit it, it’s about time).

After this “school party” moment, you don’t need to be a parent to shine when he starts, always on the dry guitar (little by little slightly wet with tears) My melody. One of his most melodramatic pieces of bravery, built in the old fashioned way, in two acts, acoustic sweetness, break, electric shock, epic solo. We then find the ziggy-stardustian inspiration in the spirit, and the form, Matthieu Chedid splitting in the Flying-V style with an enormous, aggressive and distorted solo like Mick Ronson sculpted for Moonage Daydream.

Nevertheless, always anxious to vary the pleasures, he interprets with the reinforcement on the counter-vocals of Gail Ann Dorsey, Manitoumanibeautiful para-Malian melody, and once again branches off in the direction Mogodocrazy disco-funk with little integrated choreography, for which he receives this time the helping hand of a baritone saxophone.

Arrangements sometimes too thick

The tubesquissime sequence that follows, Gimmick, Megalo, In the living room, Big little con, Deception, Mama Sam, Matchistador unleashed the public better than a place in the final (largely acquired at that time, but we will see that later) but if we take off our cap or our black glasses in the shape of -M-, we must admit that the group formed by Maxime Garoute (drums), Corentin Pujol (keyboards), Fabrice Colombani (percussions) and Gail Ann Dorsey (bassist) does not have the pop lightness, nor the funk frenzy, of the best formations of the being-capital ( the ones you can hear on the records Face to face and They)).

It plays serious, no problem, but it also plays fat a bit. Not in the sense of heavy, nor boring, but a little thick in sugars (bass and keyboards) and agents of flavors (drums and percussion), let’s say majority pop-rock. However, if Matthieu Chedi is (ultra) popular, he escapes the ordinary emollient of the mainstream.

Reminders from another dimension

He is going to prove it with supersonic, hyperbolic and ultra-joyful reminders! After a relevant and galvanizing intro from the keyboard player who quotes the mythical riff of beat it of Michael Jackson, the group releases a very rock’n’roll version of Mojo concluded with a very pissed off solo that would have pleased the author of the opening riff (Eddie Van Halen, finally, friends!). In the aftermath, in an inversely deplorable mode, Ce jour-là imposes itself as the new piece of bravery of -M-. The choirs and the beat on the bass by Gail Ann Dorsey, the organ by Corentin Pujol, the velvety rhythm, everything contributes to carry the song towards the clouds that Matthieu Chedid is responsible for tearing up with a gigantic solo, very well written, gradually slipping from glam rock à la Bowie to prog à la Pink Floyd. The masterpiece of the evening, certainly… before the total madness.

I say love, started on the piano, tranquillou, a little soft, takes on the athlete’s hair, is disheveled until all ours are drawn up on the beast. It’s 10:46 p.m., and Matthieu Chedid leaves for a good ten-minute solo… and in the room in direct contact with his fans. The bodyguards and the cameraman live during these 600 and a few seconds, their best life… Yes, it’s ironic… But for everyone else, zero second degree, it’s panard in the wild . Yes, we yelled a bit at that moment, the Blues didn’t hear anything, they were already in bed.

After that… well after that, he still had enough to sing In your radio. “I have to go on your radio”, he repeats tirelessly. How to say… we want to bet that in the cars leaving the Sud de France Arena shortly after, it was done. Come on, maybe after a little check on France’s score!