It's sad to say but it had been several years since we witnessed a kind of "descent into hell" of Rock En Seine, as much in quality of programming as in number of spectators. But this year, the organizers decided to review everything. First of all, a large part of the site is changed: exit the Scene of the Grove and the Scene of Industry, the discoveries will be made on the side of the Scene of the 4 Winds -and its village- and the Firestone stage, already introduced last year. For this seventeenth edition, Rock En Seine has decided more than ever, and in a better coherence than last year, to play on different boards and attract different audiences, always earning him multiple remarks on the "lack of rock". Yes, we are in 2019 and even if most festivals have the genre in their name, music has evolved and rock is no longer the majority, far from it. Rock En Seine has understood this, without losing quality. 
The first strategy of the festival was to take us by the feelings by programming in particular The Cure as the headliner of Friday, offering 2h15 of show to the fans gathered in front of the Grande Scène, which we had not seen so full for years – far from the flop of NLP last year. But that's not all, we were also treated to Johnny Marr unpacking the biggest hits of the Smiths or EELS more fit than ever. A successful bet: Friday was indeed sold out, a first in years for the festival. Needless to say, electronic music had a prominent place for this edition. And if Major Lazer's EDM/trap concert is far from having seduced us, the rest was surely among the best moments of the weekend. While all the fans of The Cure joined the subway, Vitalic and Rebeka Warrior came to present live to those who would have still escaped their recent project Kompromat. Lateral horizontal lasers reflect on the singer, chanting raw, cold but devilishly shivering German lyrics while the producer delivers a most devastating industrial techno, making it one of the most ambitious electronic lives of the year. But the electronic event of the weekend was obviously the closing by the great Aphex Twin, which must have destabilized more than one. Majestic lasers, giant screens distorting the audience and ramping up to a final quarter of an hour dantesque, the Briton achieved a masterstroke, and surely a stroke of genius during a sequence of several minutes distorting the faces of French personalities, from Jean-Luc Mélenchon to the Visitors via Bilal Hassani. 
But despite the detractors, rock and pop did have their place over the weekend. In an hour chrono on the stage of the Cascade -questionable choice, we would rather have seen Royal Blood take this slot to leave the big stage to Foals, in short-, the English of Foals delivered one of their most intense concerts between two "Fuck Trump! Fuck Brexit!" by singer Yannis Philippakis. We will also remember the half-energetic, half-depressive set of Girl In Red, crowd-surfing from the top of her 20 years, Let's Eat Grandma experimenting flute, saxophone and macarena in a general good mood, the newcomer Clairo and her cute and intimate bedroom pop being offered a Breton LGBT flag, and finally the magnificent and talented Jorja Smith illuminating with her "Blue Lights" the park of Saint-Cloud. Despite more or less last-minute cancellations (between Sharon Van Etten, Max Jury and King Princess, the last one is surely the one we keep the most in the throat, announced a few hours before the set), Rock En Seine proved this year that he was far from dead. On the contrary, it still deserves its place among the best French festivals. Featured photo credit: Olivier Hoffschir
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