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Gabi Hartmann’s latest record, La femme aux yeux de sel (The Woman with Salty Eyes), opens with the sound of ocean waves and an initiation into a fairy tale world. We have arrived, Hartmann tells the listener over a lush Afro-Caribbean-inspired arrangement, on a secret island. Here lives Salinda, a woman with eyes made of salt. When she cries, her eyes dissolve little by little. A child’s voice—Hartmann’s niece—joins in, asking questions like one would during a bedtime story: where is this island, and what else goes on there? 

It’s a bold opening that’s fitting for Hartmann’s second album, an ambitious release filled with numerous collaborators, mystical themes, and lofty concepts. Over the last several years, the Parisian artist has gained a reputation as a talented singer-songwriter and jazz musician. Her 2023 self-titled debut was France's best-selling jazz/world album that year, earning her accolades in her home country and abroad. 

Hartmann’s songs blend a range of influences—jazz, chanson, soul, folk and chamber pop—in multiple languages. Inspired by her studies in ethnomusicology, her travels, and growing up in a musical home, her musical knowledge is varied and far-reaching, with influences ranging from Nina Simone and Otis Redding to Gal Costa and Miriam Makeba. La femme aux yeux de sel sees Hartmann more fully exploring and experimenting with her influences. It is more adventurous than her self-titled record, drawing more heavily from samba, rhumba, West African and South African music, and gospel. 

A pleasure of listening to la femme aux yeux de sel is in being invited to explore these influences. “Sikolaiko,” the third track on the record, pays homage to the Djolé, perhaps inspired by the West African master drummer Mamady Keïta. The song “La Pomena”, which Hartmann sings in Spanish, is a beautiful cover of the Argentinian folk singer Mercedes Sosa, whose character Eulogia is a kindred spirit to Hartmann’s Salinda. “Salinda, La fille au yeux de sel”, the album’s opening track, is clearly inspired by “Rumba des Îles” from the 1975 film India Song. Meanwhile, the elegant and dramatic “Take a Swing at the Moon” sounds like it was inspired by old-school jazz and swing, following in the footsteps of Billie Holiday’s “Good Morning Heartache” or Ella Fitzgerald’s “Ev'ry time we say goodbye.” The string section swells cinematically, and the plucked guitar creeps along menacingly as Hartmann, with hushed, melancholic vocals, chastises her lover for persisting in an argument. It’s a moving song and a highlight on the record. 

Listening to La femme aux yeux de sel, it’s clear that Hartmann is equally influenced by her collaborators. There are many musicians on this album—“Take a Swing at the Moon” alone features at least thirteen people, by my count. Among the album's contributors are previous collaborators like producer and songwriter Jesse Harris, who has worked with Hartmann since her debut EP, and jazz guitarist and composer Julian Lage, who contributed to Hartmann’s first record. Here, too, are French saxophonist Laurent Bardainne, who co-produces several songs alongside Hartmann, and Franco-Syrian flautist and composer Naissam Jalal. The French psychedelic indie folk band The Oracle Sisters feature on the album’s penultimate song. 

Each contributor adds their own flavour to the record, but Hartmann is able to navigate these many musical influences while keeping the record sonically cohesive. The swinging, gospel-inspired “Into My World,” which was co-written and co-produced by Harris, could sound incongruous next to the hazy, sun-drenched blend of indie folk and psychedelic pop on “Drink the Ocean,” co-written by Hartmann, the Oracle Sisters, and Oan Kim. But the record is ultimately held together successfully by Hartmann’s distinctive voice and a rich backdrop of talented session musicians. Of particular note are some excellent contributions by percussionist Fabe Beaurel Bambi and guitarist Abdoulaye Kouyaté. 

La femme aux yeux de sel is a concept album, but only loosely. Salinda, the woman with the eyes of salt, is only mentioned by name in the first and last tracks of the record. The album is divided into three sections, or “chapters” as they are called in the liner notes. One can try to read each song as a step in Salinda’s journey, but it is not necessary. It is enough to know that the album’s chapters follow a simple dramatic structure: journey, conflict, and resolution. Chapter One is all about possibility: exploring new lands and new relationships, a search, like Salinda, for the missing something that will make you whole. Chapter Two, which features some truly gorgeous string arrangements by Maycon Ananias, is about heartache: our heroine believes she has found what is missing, only to have her hopes dashed. Chapter Three is about picking up the pieces. 

A sense of longing permeates La femme aux yeux de sel. Instruments dance around each other, in conversation but not quite meeting in harmony. In the end, this sense of longing is not necessarily resolved. It’s not clear if Salinda finds the secret to fix her salt eyes. But one gets the sense that, as the saying goes, it’s more about the journey than the destination. The album ends with the promise of finding solace in nature and music. The rich tapestry of music from across the world that Hartmann draws from and, in turn, pays homage to is part of the solution. It offers the opportunity to find connection and common ground and to create something meaningful, as Hartmann does with her collaborators. It is also a way to explore and honour our global cultural inheritance and pass it down to a new generation—Hartmann’s niece appears again on the final track of the record, and one imagines that she will grow up, like Hartmann, exposed to a wide variety of music from across the world. During a time when the world seems rather bleak, La femme aux yeux de sel offers some much-needed hope, a vision of how the world could be.