Behind BEYRIES, a side of rock. No escape possible. Dressed as if for the stage, cast in a trouser dress with multicolored sequins, she clings with one hand to a crevice of damp rock, precariously balanced. Trapped, one might say. Fragile and spectacular. What to do ? Turn your head, don’t look, your hair as your last refuge.
This is how BEYRIES can be seen on the cover photo of his new album, entitled Fire in the lilacs. “We went to La Malbaie, we did some scouting on the beach. Of all the photos, the Ping Pong Ping team and I chose this one. She had something that spoke to us. »
We could even say that it is the photo that represents it the most…radically? “In any case, it’s the image of someone who is not comfortable with the idea of showing themselves,” Amélie Beyries readily concedes. Who adds: “It’s really painful for me, the photo shoots, it’s so not my nature. » The cover symbolizes exactly that: the BEYRIES who decided nine years ago to officially be a singer, who has achieved notable success and who must accept what that implies, and at the same time, the Amélie who diverts the face.
In showcase of the first album, Landing, there were just a bunch of little drawings. For the second, Encounter, the face takes up all the space. A negation of the image by the opposite, we understand. “It was saying: there you have it, there, my face! No makeup, close-up, you can’t show off anymore…” As if the question of being or not being in representation had been settled forever. Not that easy. ” I understood it. I would dress in a black turtleneck every day of my life. I would make a Christiane Charette of myself. But I’m not the interviewer, I’m the interviewee. It would be ridiculous to disappear. I understood that too. This is the advantage of not having been known too young. You see yourself doing it. »
A mutual need for proximity
The solution was elsewhere: to abolish the distance as much as possible, to break down the barriers, to “lay down the guardrails”, as she sings in The promise. “It was with this goal of extreme rapprochement that I went to sing at people’s homes. » Some winners of a simple draw saw her arrive at their home. “It was a remarkable moment for me, extraordinary moments. This is precisely what is normal for me, this is my nature. I like people. Human contact. The links. My mother told me that in the carriage, in the streets of Outremont where I was born, I always stretched my arms around. Then, I worked in restaurants for a long time, I worked in cinema with lots of people. All my life I have been among people, it was certainly not to isolate me in an ivory tower once I became a singing star. »
“After COVID,” she continues, “I really asked myself the question: do I want to continue doing this job? Yes. But how ? The answer was obvious: touch, be touched. In every possible way. » Of which act: in addition to shows salon, she has multiplied intimate shows. Even in larger venues, the Grand Théâtre de Québec and the Outremont theater in mid-February, the Maisonneuve theater of the PdA at the next Francos, she promises to shatter the fourth wall. “Yes, there will be lighting, staging, but I can very well go and sing in the room, talk to people. I love that. These are my favorite moments. There are unexpected things, imperfections. There is life! »
Reveal yourself in French
The other part of the merger operation is to offer for the first time an album entirely written in French. In more than close collaboration with the actor Maxime Le Flaguais, Amélie Beyries undertook to reveal herself, first to herself, then to him to transpose the confidences into skillful rhymes that she could completely inhabit. “I locked the window / I wanted to meet myself / Desired with all my being / To spot goodness,” she says in a clear voice in the first radio extract from the album, Time.
It’s a very different gesture from that of including a song in French here and there, I will be a hundred years old (with Louis-Jean Cormier) on LandingOr We are on Encounter. The mixing approach was in the English way, BEYRIES’ voice integrated into the instrumentation. This time, the singer has her space, the best place, and the subtle percussions of Robbie Kuster, the fine guitars of Joseph Marchand, the marvelous strings arranged by Guido Del Fabbro, and even the piano of BEYRIES, everything is at the service of the voice, sovereign and pure. “I enunciate better, I think. In English, you can just be lulled by the whole thing. In French, words need to resonate syllable by syllable. »
Lend an ear, open your heart
Behind the day, in duet with Albin de la Simone, is thus a true French encounter, a poetic dialogue where it is a question of being attentive to understand what is happening… between the lines. “We learn / The fragile letters / of our names”. There is a healthy demand for listening through Fire in the lilacs, which is commensurate with the artist’s desire to reveal: reaching the other happens beyond the character, beyond the image. “I wanted the emotions to be conveyed, and the listeners to feel involved. Without giving the keys to meaning at all costs, but by opening the doors. »
BEYRIES arrives alone in the song which closes the album, Lighthouse, with the piano as its only companion. It’s a song that exalts the present moment, as BEYRIES had not dared to do so specifically since the cancers she fought. “Until the last war / What will my body deliver…” she sings wholeheartedly halfway through the text. Like a call heard, a large choir then joins her to sing with her her most personal message: “The pale skin / And the eyes without light / Will tell the young and strong / That love is a guide / A beacon in the universe. » Brighter than all the glitter of stardom.