The general mood of the music here is dark, both exasperated and desperate, and the lyrics "paint pictures of sordid Parisian clubs, of the injustice of society, of death and of life, of lost friendships and of failing domestic relationships".

[1] After having inserted two symphonic songs ("Ton style", "Tu ne dis jamais rien") in his mostly pop rock oriented album La Solitude (1971), after having re-recorded his 1950s oratorio on Guillaume Apollinaire's vast poem La Chanson du mal-aimé ("Song of the Poorly Loved", 1972), Ferré feels now ready to establish himself as a complete artist, author and musician, who will do without any arrangers' services from now.

So here he goes completely symphonic with his own material for the first time (he had gone orchestral before with arranger Jean-Michel Defaye but it was mostly on renowned material by French poets from the 19th century - see Verlaine et Rimbaud and Léo Ferré chante Baudelaire albums) and he often replaces singing by intense spoken-word and declamation.

Words are handled with kid gloves: ‘menstrual blood’ is called ‘an indisposition’ and people go round insisting that certain terms should be confined to the laboratory or the dictionary.

"[1]The album ends with the radical, pessimistic yet epic and fighting "Il n'y a plus rien" ("There is no more"), that deals with libertarian and revolutionary utopias disappointment from the 1960s and May 68.