Izia – Live At SFR Studios – 2012 – Past Daily Soundbooth: Rock Without Borders Edition

– Izia – SFR Studio Concert – March 19, 2012 –

Over to Paris this week for a concert by the deceptively dramatic and dynamic Izia and her band, recorded live at SFR Studios in Paris on March 19, 2012.

Izia  is the daughter of late 70’s Pop Icon Jacques Higelin and the brother of singer-songwriter Arthur H, so music is firmly planted in the DNA here.

Izia is one of those singers who rips a song to shreds, in typical French take-no-prisoners fashion. Even though she sings in English (which is a little hard to understand from time to time, but that’s a moot point), her audience is dyed-in-the-wool French and her commitment to any given song hovers between High-Voltage and Nuclear. By the end of this one-hour set her voice was starting to flag, but I think that’s a product of just not holding anything back.

Frankly, it’s great to see someone toss themselves into their work like she does. I found myself glued to the speakers the first time I heard her several years ago when this concert was new – she is anything but a half-measures performer. And the audience has picked up on that too, and responded in kind.

In 2006, Izïa released her first extended play and the following year she opened for Iggy & the Stooges at the Printemps de Bourges music festival. She consequently embarked on a tour of France, which consisted of over thirty dates. On 8 June 2009, her eponymous debut studio album, Izia was released in France. In some reviews, the album garnered comparisons to Janis Joplin. The album performed reasonably well in the French albums chart, achieving a peak position of #31 and staying in the top 100 for 17 consecutive weeks.

Izïa has since released three more albums that reached the charts in France: So Much Trouble (2011), La Vague (2015), and Citadelle (2019). In 2021, Izïa contributed a cover of the Metallica song “My Friend of Misery” to the charity tribute album The Metallica Blacklist.

If you haven’t heard Izia yet, here’s a taste of what they were listening to on the other side of the Atlantic in 2012. If you already have – you know.

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