Earlier this week, the preliminary round of the 27th Francouvertes began, and these first two evenings did not disappoint. Rock song on the Monday program with Bourbon, Reno McCarty and Cure-Pipe, electro and jazzy eclecticism on the next day’s menu with Rossomodo, Claudie Létourneau and Jeanne Laforest, and already candidates that we would see in the final. In three words: it’s off to a good start. Let’s take a closer look.
Monday: Bourbon, Reno McCarthy, Cure-Pipe
David Bourbonnais, known as Bourbon, is obviously a smart guy, in which case he probably wouldn’t have attracted so many excellent female musicians to his project. See who accompanies her: Sarah Dion of NOBRO and the Shirleys on drums, Agathe Dupéré (she notably accompanies Safia Nolin) on bass, Mélanie Venditti on violin and guitar and Alex Guimond (Comment Debord) on keyboards, the cherry masculine on the sunday.
A high-calibre orchestra, at the service of a songwriter who is still looking for his own identity – the playing of his musicians gave relief to his songs, which lacked it. Relaxed pop-folk-rock, pleasantly lyrical, but agreed, already heard. Sarah Dion accompanied Vincent Vallières on tour last summer, let’s say that her bearings had already all been found.
Reno McCarthy brought a completely different proposal. The phlegmatic singer-songwriter from Montreal, born in Great Britain, launched his career in English almost four years ago; he seized the opportunity of the Francouvertes to venture into the language of his complementary identity, with conviction. This calm on stage which oozes from a certain experience of crowds, a sense of melody which serves him well. Aesthetically, McCarthy walks in the wake of Jesse Mac Cormack and Half Moon Run, offering a song tinged with folk and indie pop, soft and comfortable.
Then came the slap. Cure-Pipe, the new pride of Jonquière, who managed to appear less messy on stage than on his first album J’avais, released last month on the young Saguenéenne label Soluté Records. In the acknowledgments of the said album, he quotes Gainsbourg and Charlebois, we will especially underline the influence of the latter in his greedy psychedelic rock song. We will especially note his ease on stage, his own like that of his young orchestra, these beautiful hairy people who presented themselves to Montrealers last fall on the poster of the Coup de Coeur Francophone.
Cure-Pipe is Thomas Dakin Perron, an incandescent character with songs that are often short, always disheveled, but whose text does not seek to hide under the rhythm, the guitars and the saxophone. Assumed, up to the end of his mustache, the presence so magnetic that he makes us forget his inexperience on the stage – a natural beast of the stage directing his orchestra to the instrumental rock at changing speed at the end of the number.
Tuesday: Rossomodo, Claudie Létourneau, Jeanne Laforest
Another day, other customs: Rossomodo, Létourneau and Laforest last Tuesday evening had a completely different vision of what song can be. Rossomodo dared, we must first grant it to him. A dancer by training, the singer-songwriter turned to electronic pop three years ago. He was alone in defending his work on stage, accompanied by pre-recorded sequences which revealed the liveliness of his project: the lack of sound research, of refinement, could be heard in his banal synth colors. His amber voice, his stage presence, with studied gestures, compensated for the absence of an accompanist, and in his compositions some beautiful flashes were detected – we can compare him to Eddie de Pretto, without the urgency or the words for the express.
Claudie Létourneau loves pink. She didn’t really need to tell us at the microphone — all her musicians were, like her, dressed in pink — but the detail underlined the endearing candor of the musician, in her lyrics as well as in her interpretation. The orchestra had made its classes in jazz, you could hear it in the groove of the songs, and Létourneau had the energy of a future beast of the stage, smiling, dynamic, embodied, singing with an energy that excused the approximate notes, his frank and unvarnished voice put at the service of a raw emotion.
The jazz argument was better integrated into the performance of Jeanne Laforest and her solid orchestra. Her performance zigzagged between furious passages like the one she offered us as soon as the curtain rose and moments of contemplation. She arrived visibly confident at the preliminaries of the Francouvertes, despite the complexity of her songs which avoid the traditional verse-chorus-verse structure, opening the form to jazz fused to indie rock. The singer-songwriter ends this first week at the top of the preliminary charts, we will have the opportunity to talk about it again.
The preliminary list
1- Jeanne Laforest
2- Pipe Cleaner
3- Reno McCarthy
4-Bourbon
5- Rossomodo
6- Claudie Letourneau