Guido Belcanto - In de Kronkels van Mijn Geest (2021)

The man who makes a great art of cabaret, Guido Belcanto, has waited four years to delight his fans with studio album number fourteen. A historically long time. There is, of course, an excuse, in the form of a C word and the number nineteen. And Belcanto also confesses on its website: “I am making ever higher demands on myself”. Just to say: get ready to lick your thumbs and fingers, friend of the better Flemish life song.

There are many twists and turns in Guido Belcanto's mind. From charm to tearjerker, romance to melancholy. Or a combination of the last two, such as (A Light Love With) A Girl In Full Fleur may agree before a “life as a famous Don Juan” began. A beautifully empathetic song that in fact contains an unvarnished advertisement of “old rocker looking for young skirt”.

There is also a lot of blues in this album. Literally and figuratively. Because the charm singer looks back at both the glorious past and the ever-coming step in life on a bed of coldly lamenting guitar, the sadness of a sack bag or the sentimental, open chords of the harmonica. Ballads with the melancholy of a howling slide to the rhythm of the very last slow of the night. The singer rides into the setting sun like a cowboy. Because yes, you can also withstand a nice game of country for this record. By the way, you have to be Guido Belcanto to disguise the problem of premature ejaculation with the words: “Don't waste your fire too quickly / For a man happiness is short-lived”, in a kind of man/woman Je T'aime, Moi Non Plus romance.

Funnily enough, Golden Guido saves the real trump cards for the end. Because both the uptempo sing-along Plastic Jesus and the beautifully corny country life song Rozen Op De Mesthoop Van Het Leven (what a fantastic title!) are instant classics. And to make it clear that someone urgently needs to donate a cowboy hat to Belcanto, he also does a modernized, rather literal Dutch rendition of Johnny Cash's Ghostriders In The Sky. In full and original grandeur.

Ominously enough, 'In De Kronkels Van Mijn Geest' closes with a dejected, instrumental minute of classical Requiem Pour Un Chanteur. Hidden message or open ending? Who's to say. He is a bit sad, that Guido Belcanto on the cover of his fourteenth album. But as far as we're concerned, there's absolutely no reason to.