HUGH COLTMAN - Good Grief | LP

Six years after his last solo album 'Who's Happy?' and two years after collaborating on the tribute to Dr John project 'Night Trippin'' as a duo with guitarist Matthis Pascaud, one of the most beautiful voices in jazz and rock is back with his new album "Good Grief". Hugh Coltman, double winner of the Victoire de la Musique Jazz award, returns with a beautiful rock/blues album of new compositions, accompanied by a band of great musicians. In his sixth album, Hugh Coltman wrestles with his shadows. Grief, fatherhood, mid-life crisis, and the vertigo of the times: the rock crooner with the oh-so-British accent is honest. Adorned with jazz, folk, and blues, his devilishly poetic songs touch you deep in the heart. What if the crisis had a silver lining? "Writing these things freed me," reveals Hugh Coltman. A crisis album, Good Grief? Yes, but far from being entirely bleak. There is resilience and love in these songs delivered at the turn of forty, the desire to embrace his vulnerabilities as a man and a father, as if Hugh were mourning his "old self," the one who imagined himself as Roger Daltrey of The Who, belting out blues-rock riffs. "Rather than chasing a character I no longer am," he says, "the idea was to fight and accept. Where would that take me? Where could I find positivity? All of this helped me pinpoint certain things I wanted to convey in these songs, primarily for myself, but also to help others." The first thing you hear in Good Grief is Hugh Coltman's wonderful voice, deep in time, his exquisite vibrato, his sense of drama, and, of course, that irresistible accent. One foot in England and the other in America, Hugh admits to having delved into Nick Drake as much as the early Blake Mills. And finally, the inspiration was there, lurking in the pages of a notebook, spat out by the agitated on networks behind their screens ("Keyboard Warriors"), vomited by the inhumanity of the world, like that tragically famous photo of Aylan, the Syrian refugee child in a red t-shirt found dead on a beach in Turkey ("Red T-Shirt"). On this world, his and ours, Hugh Coltman offers a thoughtful gaze, whether empathetic, sharp, or disillusioned, far from the impetuous person he once was. In the interim, he found the answer to the question he was asking himself: why make another record? Well, for all these reasons, and one last one, perhaps the most important: "Because I like it."