Like the Gauls of Goscinny and Uderzo, the only thing that Étienne Dufresne was afraid of on Thursday, at 7 p.m., was that the sky would fall on his head in the middle of a concert at the Francos, he confided to the audience gathered in front of the stage of the Petit parterre in the Quartier des spectacles. And as if he wanted to avoid stirring up the storm, he and his four accompanists delicately laid out the grooves of the songs from his latest album, Étienne Dufresne makes effortspublished last January.
It had the desired effect, and even better. It’s as if his song made the temperature drop on the thermometer. The State Meteorological Service confirmed it shortly afterwards: the heatwave of the last few days was over.
All around, the fans sang with him the words of In your arms: “I’m no longer a man / Today / I’m an apple pie”, a song of love and vulnerability, the two main themes of this nice album of outdated songs with its Quebec pop influences. Charming performance by the singer-songwriter and his orchestra (in which Lysandre plays, ripe to offer us a second album) who, last night, played with their fingertips, picks and sticks, making the songs freer , more volatile, than on the album.
The thick cover of dark gray clouds did not leave the Quartier des spectacles, but it only continued to cast shadow. The Francos site thus seemed less busy than since the start of the outdoor festivities last Friday. The fear of a downpour, the heat, or a bit of both, certainly gave festival-goers pause; on the main stage of the Place des festivals, Miel de Montagne was moving around, shirtless as usual, wearing a pink skirt, a pair of Vans and a guitar around his neck, accompanied by a drummer playing electronic sequences. His pop-funk song attracted the curious, scattered around the Square.
Even Klô Pelgag played to appease the sky. “It will be the most relaxed concert of the Francos,” she joked at the start of her “Solo piano” concert, presented at 8 p.m. at Studio TD – a concert announced at the last minute, we don’t really know why , besides, maybe he lacked contact with the public to the point of having proposed this on a whim, but whatever it was, the place was obviously crowded. Klô solo, his songs in their simplest expressions, what luck!
And some new ones too? Summer officially arrived on Thursday around 4:50 p.m., but Klô Pelgag is already making us dream of fall: ABRACADABRA, her fourth album, will arrive on October 11, that still seems a long way away. Between the selected pieces from his three albums, this Umami offered at the start of the concert, Soleil, The snow falls without hurting himself from his first The Alchemy of Monsters (2013) — what delights! —, there was indeed an unreleased one, never recorded, and which will never be found on an album, “because we don’t have to make cash with everything! “, she commented. Eager to go see a piece of Karkwa and meet up with Eddy de Pretto, we left before she lifted the veil on the material from her new album, if indeed she had spoiled her fans.
Place des Festivals, Karkwa was talking, and promises to do it again at Foufounes Électriques at 11 p.m. this evening, another concert announced at the last minute. They too will have avoided the downpour, which was not likely to reach de Pretto, housed on the stage of the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at the Place des Arts – what he called his “promotion of elegance”, after having sang and rapped at the MTelus during his last visit.
Further on in his singing tour, he apologized half-heartedly for not having been able to lug all his scenography and his orchestra across the Atlantic, singing alone on pre-recorded tapes, at one point joined on stage by his pianist Johan Barnoin to sing Personne pour l’hiver and Pause, his duet with Yseult (without Yseult, obviously).
And yet, no one felt wronged by the performance of the singer-songwriter, who had retained the concern for staging: the grand piano on the garden side, with a promontory topped with a standing microphone , while a small stage was erected on the courtyard side, decorated with a light screen on which, every other song, a video was projected of its musicians playing the songs as we heard them, as if they were giving a concert in a rehearsal room, somewhere in France. The effect was strange, but frankly successful, especially since after all, Eddy de Pretto has this magnetic presence on stage which fills all the gaps.
These 35e Francos will end on Saturday with, in particular, concerts by Beyries, Gab Bouchard, Zaho de Sagazan, the Breastfeeders and the big Ambiance R&B event.