Lorraine. Antoine Pétry: twenty years of songs and a first album

His songs, lyrics, and music are like him: funny yet gentle, sharp yet kind, written in a sympathetic ink that William Sheller wouldn't have disowned. Our colleague and regional reporter Antoine Pétry is releasing his first CD. A little gem, beautifully recorded at home in Bouxières-aux-Chênes during a musical evening with friends. Really good live music, without filters or studio tinkering. Eighteen locally sourced songs, which were originally intended to deliver nothing but raw joy.

A good glass of wine, plenty of sincere friendship, and music: "I've always written songs, just like that, without pretension, pictures, sometimes jokes, winks, which from rhyme to rhyme end up escaping the writer. I confess... I love this alchemy," explains Antoine, who, with his accomplice and friend Christophe Bind, works as a craftsman of words and melodies. Without pretense or fuss, Vildo - his artist pseudonym inherited from his native Touraine - takes us to Pont-à-Mousson, sings of the joys of being a couple, the smell of shin guards, the pangs of the first bald spot, and also those "loose rhymes" that put us back on our feet when our spirits are flagging.

The songs of Antoine and his musician friends, whose cultural connection is obvious, are good for you. Indeed, in parallel with his personal research with his accomplices from Vouzutetor , a combo dedicated 100% to the work of Brassens , Antoine Pétry already has a good fifty concerts to his credit. The artist knows dozens of Brassens' verses by heart, fascinated as he is by the fine and sparkling writing of the patriarch of Sète.

Nourished by nearly 40 years of local reporting throughout the Grand Est, Antoine Pétry delivers, with Pontamoussongs, a series of colorful paintings worthy of a little master of the present time. Being touching without being boring, restoring the guitar to its former glory, mocking his era without cynicism or malice, including with a little self-mockery: this is the trademark of Antoine Pétry, whose all-white, sober CD cover, signed with a funny drawing of Lefred Thouron sets the tone. Striving to give joy, without taking himself seriously.