“Letting Go”, Francis Degrandpré

Launched in Saint-Tite this weekend, Francis Degrandpré’s second album is intended to be “new country.” The name is ambitious: it would be the last corral where “good old rock’n’roll” frolics. In truth, we are still and always in the country-rock-pop neighborhoods of the Eagles, a mainstream formula, Salebarbes with shaved hair. Undeniable efficiency, but toes trampled to the point of making it impossible to identify suspects. He has a good voice, this Degrandpré, fair and clean, but whose voice exactly? In this “new country” we no longer have the naturally striking personality of a Patrick Norman or a Gildor Roy. Or of a Sara Dufour, more recently. We are rather in the local adaptation of everything that plays, replays and replays on American radio (97.5 FM, near us). Only the names of the places change: “This morning I’m taking the road to Saguenay / heading towards the fjord.” It could be an Interstate to Maine. It’s never anything other than “Another show,” stages of a “time [qui] “passes” like kilometers. Let yourself goliterally, lets itself be listened to. Without tiring? Without a lasso, rather.

To see in video