A billowingly epic in its delivery
With its lush production and a loquacious lyrical style laid down by Caesar’s rich, earthy baritone, “Waiting for Sorrow” is a swelling and heartfelt tribute to the acclaimed Irish playwright Samuel Beckett (“Waiting for Godot”) who, like Caesar Spencer, was also a Paris resident for much of his adult life.
As in the play, “Waiting for Sorrow” explores the symbiotic (or even solipsistic) nature of relationships. This is a key concept which is further developed throughout the rest of the album.
From the radio static that welcomes the listener in, to its ricocheting rhythm sections and its soaring guitar break; “Waiting for Sorrow” is at once billowingly epic in its delivery, smoulderingly suave in its stylistics and brightly effervescent in its ambitions. Providing the single with certain vintage panache, Jacqueline Taïeb, an artist who very much embodies the French yé-yé spirit of the 60s, also offers her inimitable vocals to the recording.
Continuing a long line of classic songwriters, from Scott Walker to Lee Hazlewood, Morrissey to Peter Doherty, who have long looked beyond their patch for inspiration and a deeper sense of connection, Caesar Spencer is an artist whose music could not have been born from residing in one country alone. An Englishman born in Peru, Caesar Spencer also happens to be Swedish, but now finds himself in France.
Feeling musically uninspired by his humdrum life in Blighty and sensing an air of Brexit around him, Caesar made the conscious decision to move to Paris in search of new opportunities and a fresh fountain of creativity.
Dreaming of drawing upon his musical loves that had lit up his life on the other side of the channel (The Kinks, Bowie, The Smiths), while infusing them with a certain French kind of sensibility and sophistication, he began
mapping out a blueprint for a wildly ambitious new record.
Broadly echoing his own journey to date, ‘Get Out Into Yourself’, is a concept-album-of-sorts; inspired by those with nomadic origins and their search for identity. With a loose narrative that follows a protagonist journeying through different cultural landscapes, the record unspools a tale laced with existential questions and the quest to find yourself in an ever-shifting world.
Given that kind of context, it’s perhaps fitting that ‘Get Out Into Yourself’ is very audibly a record that transcends genres and borders at every turn too. Flickering from winsomely British pastoral-pop (“Isn’t That What Jimi Said”), to gnarly West Coast surf-rock (“Hail Caesar”), to provocative French cinema-styled scorings (“When I Whisper In Your Ear”) to cosmic crooner ballads beamed directly from the Bowie-verse (“Requiem”), every corner of ‘Get Out Into Yourself’ is illuminated with an incandescent imagination and international spirit.
Perhaps most of all, ‘Get Out Into Yourself’ is a loving tribute to France, a nation that single-handedly rekindled Caesar’s creative spark. The recording of the album gave Caesar an opportunity to pay homage to a remarkable
musical heritage that too often goes unrecognised. As Caesar explains:
“It’s simply a love letter to France. I wanted to give something back to a country that has given me so much. And I really wanted to shine a light on this incredibly sophisticated French musical artistry. They have a way of doing things here which is unparalleled elsewhere. It’s phenomenal and strangely enough not so well known outside of France. They should get more cred!”
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