La femme aux yeux de sel – Gabi Hartmann

In her second album, Gabi Hartmann abandons the safety of her debut to craft an emotional map where geography and fiction dissolve. La femme aux yeux de sel is a story articulated through Salinda, a character born from the symbolism of children's tales who crosses seas of salt in search of her origin. Hartmann makes the music feel like a logbook: there are fragments of a nocturnal Paris, echoes of the Brazil that shaped her, and the sobriety of New York vocal jazz.

The album's architecture rests on a plurality of voices that Hartmann directs with astounding maturity. The collaboration with flutist Naïssam Jalal in "Le lever du soleil" brings an almost political mysticism, while the presence of saxophonist Laurent Bardainne and the pop sensibility of Oracle Sisters expand the record into less predictable dimensions. Even when she dives into the tradition of jazz standards in tracks like "Take a Swing at the Moon," her voice—darker and more reflective—shuns imitation to embrace a genuine vulnerability.

Produced once again alongside Jesse Harris, the album moves away from industrial homogeneity to embrace the sincerity of the encounter. The alternation between French, English, and Portuguese is not a cosmopolitan trope, but the natural language of an artist who understands travel as a process of unlearning.

In tracks like "Tout mon secret," Hartmann demonstrates that the balance between harmonic sophistication and melodic clarity is, precisely, her greatest strength. It is an album that breathes, that allows itself the luxury of a pause, and that, in its feminization of the creative process, finds a collective strength that sustains every note.