L'echoppe

The album was initiated by a French composer and musician of Bulgarian origin Konstantin Kazansky, who previously worked with Vladimir Vysotsky and Alyosha Dimitrievich ^[1] . In his work with Shevchuk, he preferred to take a leading role by writing arrangements and independently determining the set of songs recorded for the album ^[2] , as well as performing mixing of the recorded material. About 60 musicians from different countries took part in the recording ^{[3] [1]} . Thus, in the spring of 2007, an album called L'Echoppe was recorded at the Coppelia studio in Paris , which translates into Russian as "Crib". Shevchuk defined the style of the album as “The same original chanson - romantic and soft, simple and noble” ^[4] .

The official release of the album was delayed until December 2008. The reason for this was the appearance of DDT's number album “ Lovely Love, ” part of which duplicated the contents of “Larka” ^[5] .

Alexey Mazhaev positively assesses the album: “Even in those rooms where the musical arrangement seems to be atypical for his music, the French horn and trombones still appear in the role of the slave: they follow the voice, bowing before his hoarse restraint - as a result of all the formal technological innovations the finished product turns out to be an ordinary song by Yuri Yulianovich. Voice and thought are primary, and the configuration of the accompanying team is not of decisive importance for this artist <...> Shevchuk, of course, is a gifted composer, but in this album it was more important for him to appear primarily as a poet, prophet, night companion. Listening - as always with the late Shevchuk, is not entertainment, but work, but the fatigue after this work is correct and healthy ” ^[3] .

Guru Ken about this album: “an orchestra of more than 60 musicians <...>, under the direction of Kazansky, produced an amazing fusion of French and Russian chanson. For French this music is too crude, for Russian it is unjustifiably vignette <...> The album “L'Echoppe“ (“Larek“) is quite comfortable to listen to, but Kazansky’s arrangements for new horizons could not be opened in Shevchuk’s songs. Of course, Shevchuk’s new experiment in a purely musical sense is a cut above the previous “Lovely Love”. But nevertheless he cannot replace the album “DDT” ” ^[2]

Sergey Reiter in a review on the site “ Our Neformat ” writes that “neither the French - the primordial, nor the Russian - the adapted definition of chanson for“ L'Echoppe “is not fully appropriate”. “New treatments do not diminish and, alas, do not add anything to the well-known, self-sufficient works. It’s just that the different habitat of these songs involuntarily makes us compare at the “better-worse” level. ” The reviewer wrote about the new songs: “Shevchuk’s Fresh Things -“ Emigrant ”,“ The Sad Song ”,“ Heaven on Earth ”- are simply dumped in creative disorder to the tail of the album and become cluttered with chaotic verbosity and tabor stylization ^[1] .

Denis Stupnikov noted: “Yuri Shevchuk firmly settled in the Chanson radio playlists. If the last album of the master“ Lovely Love ”confused someone, the new solo album of the leader“ DDT ”“ L'Echoppe ”leaves little to no chance for small quibbles and clichéd accusations of flirting with an undemanding audience " ^[6]

An anonymous review on the site altstav.ru states: “the album is perplexing. Who would have thought that Yuri Yulianovich Shevchuk, a guardian of the purity of Russian rock, accusing his colleagues in the shop of “corruption”, would “fall” to the level of Garik Sukachev, so unloved by him? <...> There are very few successful numbers on the album. This is directly the composition “Casket” and, surprisingly, “When the oil runs out” (we close our eyes to the contents of the song - it was done very well). But “Paris” disappointed. At acoustic concerts, the song sounded better, gave color to her code - Vadim Kurylyov’s solo. <...> The song "End of the World" in this performance seems like some drunken delirium, although earlier (and with partially different lyrics) it was perceived very well. The disappointment of the album can be safely called the song “Boys”, during the performance of which Shevchuk even forbade the audience to applaud at concerts. Here, the song is turned into a traditional gypsy booth and there is no longer any tragedy in the death of eighteen-year-old boys from enemy bullets ” ^[5] .

1. Paris - 03:31
2. Casket - 04:29
3. Romance - 02:47
4. When oil runs out - 03:07
5. End of the World - 02:49
6. The Lord respects us - 04:06
7. Boys - 02:22
8. I lit all the candles in the churches - 03:51
9. Autumn, dead rains - 02:48
10. Emigrant - 02:23
11. Heaven on earth - 03:19
12. The song is sad - 03:50
13. Agidel Gypsy (only in the gift edition)