Hotel Augusta by James Eleganz

James Eleganz' second album takes us far, far away. If the first one, “The Only One”, recorded in the Joshua Tree desert and released in 2019, evoked the great outdoors, this one is closer to the urban jungle – thanks to its Berlin recording session. And its dreamy music and ten songs fly away from overly obvious references. It feels good.
Right away, you're struck by James' voice, his deep, hushed tone, his simple, catchy melodies and his perfectly delivered English lyrics. Are you sure this guy is French? Behind him, the music is sumptuous, both familiar and totally original, world-class. No wonder, when you know who makes up the backing band for this album: Larry Mullins, also a producer, is on drums, Geoffrey Burton on guitars, and... Bertrand Burgalat on bass. Three exceptional musicians, at the service of a talented singer-songwriter.
Larry Mullins has already produced James' first album. A real complicity was born between the two musicians, as the singer tells us: "His particularity is that he played with Iggy Pop and now he's with the Bad Seeds. For me, these are my two legs. And I wasn't wrong because we quickly realized that we were both fans of a lot of things that were completely unrelated but essential to the relationship”
Larry Mullins assembled the crew, played drums and directed. One of the album's most original sounds comes from the incredible guitar parts of Geoffrey Burton, a tremendous musician who played with Arno in the late 1990s and on Bashung's Les grands Espaces tour, but also with Iggy... His playing, originally very rock, has evolved a lot: "Now he's gone into something very sonic, with a lot of pedals that he masters perfectly. Sometimes you get the impression that he's a synthesizer, almost sound design, loops that are superimposed, he has his own universe”
The other prestigious and fundamental guest is Bertrand Burgalat: "Larry had always told me that Burgalat was one of the best bassists in the world, he considers him a genius, because he was a drummer for Tricatel for years, in sessions and on tour. Bertrand didn't know me at all, and Larry didn't want to play the demos, he said, 'Geoffrey, Bertrand, they're geniuses, if we start giving them direction, we're going to channel that genius, and that would be a shame.'" Well done, because their genius is being expressed!
Behind all this, there is the omnipresent shadow of one man, Iggy Pop, a fundamental artist for James Eleganz since his beginnings: "When I was 16 or 17, I was given the video tape of the concert at the Olympia in 1991. When he did 'I Wanna Be Your Dog', it changed my life, I thought, 'I can do this'. He's a surrogate father to me. And on that gig, it was Larry Mullins on drums."
So much so that James' first band, an electro-rock group from the early 2000s, was called Success; a “Lust For Life” track on which he ended his shows. And that on his first solo album, he offered a re-reading of "The Horse Song", a track from the unjustly underrated “Zombie Birdhouse” album...
Yet James' music has little in common with Iggy's, except perhaps for the depth of their voices: "For me, it's more of a foundation. After that, my tastes have evolved enormously, I listen to very different things. I'm a huge fan of Daniel Johnston, it speaks to me a lot. Vincent Gallo's solo album, When, is for me one of the most beautiful. It has absolutely nothing to do with Iggy Pop. But there is a sensitivity... I really like fragility and mistakes, people like that, a bit broken”.
The other link between James and his mentor is probably to be found in the songs themselves, through the themes and lyrics. James conjures up the great myths of America and rock'n'roll: Los Angeles and its eternal film set, Sid and Nancy's junkie romances that mix fame and failed love affairs against a backdrop of alcohol, drugs and suicide ("Kindness In Me"), but also pop culture, the road, the life of a wandering musician, guitar in hand, who is reluctant to leave his loved one ("Precious Love").
Unlike the lyrics of many French singers who are fascinated by these worlds but merely repeat clichés, the credibility of James' lyrics is total, reinforced by the presence of Larry Mullins, who invested a lot of time in the songs: "The first thing we talked about was my lyrics. Being a non-native, I have wording and imagery that is very poetic to him. Larry is never credited on the records he's made, but I credited him on all the tracks and on the lyrics. We're artistically linked, it's like I put words to the songs in his head.
The album was made during the confinement in Berlin, where Larry Mullins lives and where he was stuck with an American passport: "Obviously, there's an imaginary world around Bowie and Iggy, but the tracks weren't written for that. The challenge was to try to give a more urban, more European sound to what I had written. There's a lot more keyboards, synthesizers, on this album”
If the city influenced the sound of the album, it also gave it its title: "The confinement was worse than in France, we found ourselves in a beautiful hotel, where we were the only guests! We did all the arrangements, the synthesizers, together, and on the last day of mixing, Larry said to me, 'for me this record will always be the Augusta Hotel'. The album was supposed to be called Night Thoughts, but I thought Hotel Augusta sounded much better”

It's not easy to describe the music on this album, you'll have to listen to it. It is surprising. From the beginning of their collaboration, the palette was very wide: James Eleganz imagined doing "something like Television, more punk nerd", while Larry Mullins recognized in the structure of his songs the influence of country music... The range of sounds and references is even wider today on Hotel Augusta. Iggy Pop. Nick Cave. Bertrand Burgalat. Daniel Johnston. Vincent Gallo. Alain Bashung. Television. Country music. Sid & Nancy. Berlin. California. Are you lost? That's a good sign. Have a good trip.

Stan Cuesta

What’s left of the Berlin of David Bowie and Iggy Pop? With this question in mind, James Eleganz imagined his second collaboration, with Larry Mullins alias Toby Dammit (Iggy Pop, Swans, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) as artistic director. Together, they created James Eleganz’s new album “Hotel Augusta”. It establishes James Eleganz as an artist to be reckoned with for many years to come.