Angèle’s Nonante-Cinq is an ode to Belgium - and to melancholy
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Angèle, a 26-year-old Belgian singer-songwriter, shot to fame in 2018 with the release of her first album, Brol, to the relief of every secondary school French student who had until that point been surviving the Francophone music module on a strict diet of Édith Piaf and Stromae. Since then, she has released an extended edition of her first album (Brol La Suite), a Netflix documentary, and collaborations with both Dua Lipa and Damso, the latter of which features on her 2022 sophomore album, Nonante-Cinq.
This title might seem innocuous, even uninventive; it translates literally to ninety-five and refers to the year she was born. There is something more profound at work here, however. Angèle bypasses the counting system used in France, where ninety-five is counted as quatre-vingt-quinze, or four-twenty-fifteen - a vestige of the Celtic language spoken in France before both Vulgar Latin and a number of Germanic languages displaced it as the vernacular. Instead, she opts for the Belgian system, which functions in much the same way as other Romance languages. It’s a nod to her Belgian identity expressed even more explicitly in the lead single, Bruxelles je t’aime, a love song to her native city replete with wry remarks about Belgian weather and favourable comparisons to other capitals (Paris and New York are in the firing line here). It’s the first track on the album and makes for a promising introduction, anticipating the intricate exploration of the melancholy potential of disco-pop that she develops over the course of the following twelve songs.
If her first album is lacking for anything, it’s stylistic diversity; Nonante-Cinq, by contrast, is a finely balanced piece of work that tempers lovestruck despondency with defiant declarations of self-sufficiency. In Libre (Free), the second track on the album, she sets the tone very clearly: “Libre, me voilà, c'est ma voie, là” (“Here I am, free, this is my path”). If Angèle is occasionally guilty of gratuitous melodrama elsewhere, it’s mitigated by tracks like Plus de sens or Solo, which Edward Pomykaj describes as the “perfect balance between danceable and cry-worthy” in his review for Pitchfork. She reworks the formula that worked so well for her in Brol to great effect, blending sombre lyrics with irresistible instrumentals; in the pre-chorus for Solo, she asks “Pourquoi attendre tout de l’autre ? / Pour combler nos manques et nos névroses” (“why expect the world from someone else? / To fill in our blanks, to alleviate our anxieties”).
The acerbic Pensées positives and gloomy Taxi are album highlights, though almost diametrically opposed in tone. Pensée positives (Positive thinking) isn’t quite as lyrically strong as some of her other efforts, but there’s a refreshing frankness to her assessment of the current mood: “Besoin de pensées positives ou de changer d'époque? / Depuis 1995, j'ai confiance qu'en mes potes” (“Do we need positive thinking or time travel? Since 1995 I’ve only trusted my friends”). The drum machine and backing vocals are absent for the stripped-back, spine-tingling outro, where Angèle vocalises over a piano and synth machine; she repeats “Le monde nous appartient” (“The world is ours”) slightly fainter each time, as if attempting to convince both her listener and herself. This sense of restraint and quiet despair is matched by the opening of Taxi, which follows Pensées positives on the tracklist; the key has changed, but moral remains low, and she rarely sings above a sotto voce. The first verse is candid and subdued: “la buée et la pluie se reflètent dans tes yeux fâchés / Si tu disparais demain, mon cœur se sera vidé” (“your angry eyes reflect the rain and condensation on the windows / if you disappeared tomorrow, my heart would be left hollow”); a gentle piano bridge precedes the chorus, where she repeats “Qu'est-ce que tu m'as fait ?” (“What have you done to me?”) with an increasing sense of desolation. It’s one of the simplest songs on the album, but no less moving than any of the others, which risk feeling overworked. Her voice is also at its best in the album’s quieter moments - but it’s her versatility, in the end, which is truly remarkable.
In spite of the occasional stumble - Tempête (Storm) noticeably lags behind the rest of the album in terms of both lyrical and melodic inventiveness - Nonante-Cinq is an impressive collection of songs that hints at the full emotional breadth of Angèle’s writing, better suited for a rainy day in a grey city than a party. Perhaps that’s why she named the album and its title track for her home country; in Brussels, after all, it’s drizzling more often than not.
