Exhibition

Avis sur l'album

Winners of musical reality shows rarely go for innovation, and Quentin Mosimann — he of the seventh season of Star Academy France — sure doesn't break the tradition on his second album, which offers energetic but completely predictable dancefloor fodder. Granted, though, playing it safe may be a prudent course to avoid the sophomore slump, especially dangerous for upcoming pop stars with their average spotlight life expectancy of a dayfly — and that's not to mention that Exhibition is Mosimann's first stab at original production after a double album of covers. But in any case, this is by-the-book electro-pop — dynamic but blatantly simple drum patterns, disco-infused synth hooks, appropriately emotional singing with some nice female backing vocals, and the general atmosphere of an evening at a hip discotheque. A sole slower ballad, "Tu le Reconnaîtras," comes up mid-album, but does little besides breaking the flow of the music, which is, admittedly, quite nice — it's hard not to tap along to Exhibition, and, of course, it is highly danceable. That said, the hip discotheque in question appears pretty generic, even by dance-pop standards — it would have fit in with any club scene over the last three decades, recalling artists from Blue System to 2 Unlimited to Timbaland, but also lacks anything to make it memorable, be it sappiness, rave-inspired aplomb, or rap groove. The album simply doesn't have enough identity style-wise, and the beats and synths alone aren't strong enough to stick to memory like, for example, Stromae's hypnotic pop anthems (except for "Il Y a un Paradis") — though, admittedly, Mosimann accomplishes the modest (but bouncy) goals he set for himself on Exhibition.