There must be a traditional side to Juliette Gréco after all, since her new album bears the prestigious Deutsche Grammophone label, reserved for "great music" by its mother company Universal. Yet Ça se traverse et c'est beau could hardly be described as a conventional offering. The credits alone bear the marks of some daring, eclectic choices: Marc Lavoine, Philippe Sollers, Amélie Nothomb, François Morel, Melody Gardot, Féfé, Marie Nimier, Jean-Claude Carrière, Christian Escoudé, Gil Goldstein, Gérard Duguet-Grasser, Alexandra Roos and, for a song available only on the album's digital version, Abd Al Malik. Not just figures from jazz and chanson, but well-known writers and unclassifiable personalities, some of them Gréco cronies, others newcomers to her world, and as always, Gérard Jouannest.
With the help of her accomplices, she's created a complex, limpid disc that subverts all the usual concept-album rules. She had been asked to do a record on Paris, so she sang about its bridges. When you've lived in Paris as long as Gréco has, you're bound to have thousands of bridge images in your mind's eye.