Panopticom. A drug name? New techniques for looking at your rear end while walking? But no. This is the title of the song that appeared just before the bean of the Kings, like a signal. The harbinger of the next album by peter gabrielentitled I/o and quite unexpected: the previous album of new material takes us back to 2002. Another way of saying, as in the days of Genesis: Supper’s Ready. The table for the end of the world is set, Brian Eno has tweaked extraterrestrial sounds around the ethereal melody of the Archangel Gabriel, planet on alert.
Beautiful symbol. Nice marketing. Release of the record in the spring, European tour to embolden the troops. That’s back to school; that’s going out. Will it trump the pawn Maneskinthe Italian rock phenomenon, whose third album will be released on January 20? Rush!, it’s called: another way of saying: “run for it”. Return by the indicated path. Telegraphed marketing.
Extracts tag the track, or even the albums. Thus a Lynda Lemay has she sown her pebbles so that we don’t lose her on the paths: on January 20, we will have There is only one step (double meaning: it will be a question of non-consent, with Janette Bertrand). This disc is nothing less than the sixth of the project once upon a time : 11 albums in 1111 days, it holds well, sacred challenge nevertheless.
Around the universe
But back to Panopticom : a new song will be revealed at each full moon, like what the song is still and always around the cowboy. The sky inspires, the planet worries: so Dumas will he offer his Cosmology on January 27, and the collective Solastalgia (Jérôme Dupras, Jérôme Dupuis-Cloutier, Guillaume St-Laurent) will occupy networks and forums to the rescue of biodiversity. Ellie Gouldingin February, promises to go Higher Than Heaven. The same month, Simon Lachancemore modest, will go on The path of broken pots. Gabrielle Shonkshe will go around the world Across the Room.
Everyone has their own path. Very often, it rhymes and it ties in with return. Revoyures are the perennials of popular music: regrowth guaranteed in the spring. Vast garden. For Shania Twain (Queen of Me) as much as Gorillaz (Cracker Island), to Metallica (72 Seasons) as much as Depeche Modefor the irascible Van Morrison (Moving on Skiffle) as much as our intractable Yves Lambert, for the adorable Adamo (In French, Please !nice title) as much as The Zombies (yes, unkillable, the Colin Blunstone-Rod Argent duo), for the irreducible indie artist PJ Harvey as much as the survivor Janet Jacksonit will be reunion time.
And for Lana Del Rey, this will be the length bet. We have until March to read the river title of his next adventure: Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. A tunnel, and what else! A fourth way? It’s the anti Panopticom, in the genre: the marketing strategy consists in prolonging the mystery. She still thinks she’s a bit in a film noir, Lana Del Rey: what does the fate of the world matter when you wonder what will happen to the beauty, like in the days of Veronica Lake, the dangerous blonde who made people forget the atomic bomb in the late 1940s.
Meanwhile, in the present…
And all this, if we are to believe the public relations experts and the media, these eternal accomplices, constitutes the start of the winter and spring season. In other words: what is finished, ready, freshly engraved. Interviews are on the program, where, invariably, the artists will underline the strangeness of living in the present which, for the most part, already has a few hairs on its chin. The pandemic has accentuated this discrepancy: sometimes the “finished product” has been put in the fridge.
However, the very idea of returning to work, after the holidays, implies a return to the construction site. In song, that means: diving into the creative process. We asked the question expressly on the networks: where are you, there, now? What about the work in progress? “Mix the 15th [janvier] to Hauteriveduo project with Catherine Durand “, answered pronto Mara Tremblay. “Compositions and two covers, we’re really excited to release this…”
For the Quebec guitarist Gretsch Mann, on forced hiatus during the pandemic, the revival goes through the base: an album of country-swing covers from the 1940s-1950s is in the works. “Pre-production, scores, everything is ready for recording,” he says. “Concretely, I will be self-financing. It seems grants are not for me. Such is the life of a musician. Never anything certain, except desire.
songs in the oven
The lyricist Martine Pratte has “always, non-stop, dishes in the oven”. Very hot, in this case. “I will, if all goes well, have two songs on the next album of Married Denise Peltier. The composers are Louis Jean Cormier and Corey Hart. One of the songs is about the latest events that happened in Iran with this poor woman killed because her hijab was not adequate… The other song? Difficult to explain. It’s a very personal song, but it talks about the woman Marie Denise is. It’s crazy because when I proposed this text to Louis-Jean, his manager replied that he was too busy. And an hour later, I received the demo from Louis-Jean who told me that he couldn’t miss this text. I was really… upside down! Marie Denise phoned me from the studio in December to ask me to add words to it… so, it smells good! »
To return, in this, is to continue to cook. Hope the songs will come to fruition. When is the release? Maybe next school year. Or an upcoming full moon.