Mélanie Isaac
For her second album, En attendant Nico, Mélanie Isaac returns to the simplicity that marked her early beginnings. It’s a back-to-essentials journey where songs, voice, and lyrics take center stage, each moment carrying a deeply personal, autobiographical weight. Far from contemporary trends, the musical setting is organic, vibrant, and luminous: nine tracks recorded, produced, and mixed at Wood Studio in Chênée with Maxime Wathieu—an approach whose honesty is disarming. The Ardennes-born singer never gives in to the lure of easy charm, choosing instead the raw intensity of piano, drums, and guitar, where voice and melody reign supreme.
After L’inachevée, a widely noticed EP (winner of the Franc’OFF Grand Prize at the Francofolies de Spa), and Surface, a first album praised by critics (including a Coup de cœur from Francophone public media for the single Paradis Nord), En attendant Nico reads like the logbook of a woman whose sensitivity clashes with a society searching for meaning (Elle cherche le A), who resists the siren calls of the times (Le camp et la couleur), and who prefers poetic self-evidence to prefabricated rhetoric (Le sublime ordinaire).
Now seemingly reconciled with her past (Le Tilleul, Une fleur sur le piano) and ready to face her ghosts (Je te garderai, Adieu je reste), Mélanie Isaac sketches an immediate escape route for our wounded souls. What has changed? Perhaps the arrival of her daughter—carried within her during the recordings—who lent her name to the album’s title track, En attendant Nico.
© Photo : Lydie Nesvadba
Mélanie Isaac
Sunday 08 June 2025
Live session at 5pm – Free Entrance
For her second album, En attendant Nico, Mélanie Isaac returns to the simplicity that marked her early beginnings. It’s a back-to-essentials journey where songs, voice, and lyrics take center stage, each moment carrying a deeply personal, autobiographical weight. Far from contemporary trends, the musical setting is organic, vibrant, and luminous: nine tracks recorded, produced, and mixed at Wood Studio in Chênée with Maxime Wathieu—an approach whose honesty is disarming. The Ardennes-born singer never gives in to the lure of easy charm, choosing instead the raw intensity of piano, drums, and guitar, where voice and melody reign supreme.
After L’inachevée, a widely noticed EP (winner of the Franc’OFF Grand Prize at the Francofolies de Spa), and Surface, a first album praised by critics (including a Coup de cœur from Francophone public media for the single Paradis Nord), En attendant Nico reads like the logbook of a woman whose sensitivity clashes with a society searching for meaning (Elle cherche le A), who resists the siren calls of the times (Le camp et la couleur), and who prefers poetic self-evidence to prefabricated rhetoric (Le sublime ordinaire).
Now seemingly reconciled with her past (Le Tilleul, Une fleur sur le piano) and ready to face her ghosts (Je te garderai, Adieu je reste), Mélanie Isaac sketches an immediate escape route for our wounded souls. What has changed? Perhaps the arrival of her daughter—carried within her during the recordings—who lent her name to the album’s title track, En attendant Nico.
© Photo : Lydie Nesvadba
