At the end of the third and fourth evenings of the preliminary round of the 27th Francouvertes, two Jeanne – and their respective orchestras – confirmed their places at the top of the charts: Côté, discovered last Monday, and Laforest, which had distinguished itself last week previous with his exploratory jazz song. Between the two slips a fascinating Heron; three candidates have already been excluded from the semi-finals, but several talents still hope to continue the competition, marked in recent days by delectable musical proposals.
Monday: Jeanne Côté, Renaud Gratton, Katia Rock
This is how it is with each edition of the Francouvertes: the list of 21 candidates always contains a handful of names that already resonate on the music scene. They are being watched, like Jeanne Côté, who easily broke the ice last Monday evening at the Lion d’Or. Firstly because we know she is a child of the ball: she is the daughter of the general manager (and singer himself) of the venerable Festival en chanson de Petite-Vallée, grew up with the sea, the rocks and the choruses .
Perhaps Jeanne Côté approached this first participation in the Francouvertes (after having registered for it seven times!) by carrying on her the weight of the expectations linked to this cultural heritage that we will first discover in the themes of her songs. — distance, family, region. Nothing seemed there: nervous, no doubt, prepared, above all.
Young, but already an old soul — forgive the cliché. A text, a voice, this soft and tight tremolo, evocative. A style, delicate, a song that is part of the tradition, with just enough modernity in the arrangements to anchor it in the present – we hear in her the influence of the models Marie-Pierre Arthur and Louis-Jean Cormier, they are members of the same family, that of Petite-Vallée and its festival. Her first appearance sounded like confirmation: Jeanne Côté is more than the daughter of a musical family. The rumor was true.
The debonair Renaud Gratton then came on stage with a completely different attitude. His humorous psyche-pop song initially came across as refreshing despite its borrowings from 1970s and 1980s song, but remained on the surface of his good comedic flashes – he kicked off his singing tour with an ode to laundry titled Never Ending Wash. In praise of everyday hassles, looking for fun where you don’t expect it, this kind of pen that brings him closer to the worlds of Bleu Jeans Bleu and Trois Accords. Simple, but endearing.
Innu multidisciplinary artist Katia Rock ended this Monday on a completely different note, and especially with a broader experience, having notably participated in the Festival en chanson de Petite-Vallée fifteen years ago. Her baggage like her regalia on her shoulders, imposing on stage, assertive. Even the small technical problems at the end of the performances will not have tarnished his diversified singing tour, while traditional singing mingled with contemporary pop and country-folk.
Tuesday: Héron, Marie Céleste, Velours Velours
Heron was also on this list of names that tell us something. Henri Kinkead forms an electro-pop duo with his twin Simon (an album, Migrationwas released in 2020), he went solo on the springboard of the Francouvertes with this new project, not electro at all, quite the contrary: this time, his pop song takes on folk and trad influences.
On paper, the proposal strikes the mind. Neotrad queer song? That’s unprecedented. The public jury was also seized, raising him to second place in the preliminary list, a comfortable position to hope to reach the semi-finals. The trad argument comes to him, we understand, from his attachment to the territory as much as to his quest for identity. The song translated them well, more folk than purely trad, although the argument of our roots music was perfectly embodied by the famous playing of the violinist Élisabeth Moquin, a violin graduate in the Traditional Music program of the Cégep de Joliette, co-founder of the É-T-É group.
Change of tunes with Marie Céleste, who is not a Marie but a group of young men from Alma, landed in Montreal with their affection for the Quebec pop-rock-prog song of the 1970s. Two voices that share the front of the stage, those of Simon Duchesne (also on guitar) and Philippe Plourde (on keyboards), a dynamic that serves well the flowery songs, but a bit convoluted, of the orchestra, otherwise convincing. We think of October by Pierre Flynn, without the committed or enraged subject, musically softer — more late August early September, so to speak.
Of the cohort, Velours Velours, the name of the project by singer-songwriter Raphaël Pépin-Tanguay, is undoubtedly the one that has already circulated the most on the underground scene. Étienne Coppée’s sidekick, his first EP Wildcat, released in the spring of 2020, was co-directed by Philippe Brach; last month, he sold out at the Pantoum in Quebec City during the Seal Off. This one was expected.
Beautiful orchestra, superb stage presence. Gesture, voice, Pépin-Tanguay was born to be on stage. His songs ? Still green, imbued with the influence of Beau Dommage and Harmonium, but with rhythmic pop impulses that dusted off the references. Landing in 6th position, will he hang on to the prize list until the semi-finals? Answer next week, during the last three evenings of the preliminaries.