But how can one be madly fond of chic disco when you have a sworn day: never disco? We are talking here very specifically about the dissssco dissssco poum poum tac tac dissssco dissssco of 1975-1980, boogie oogie oogie, Boogie Nights and others boogie wonderland. In two words, Disco Inferno! In two bigger words: Disco Sucks!
Let’s rephrase: how can we love Lisa LeBlanc’s resolutely disco new album so much when we loved the folk and rock and Cajun Lisa LeBlanc, the lover of Fleetwood Mac? ” Mission accomplished ! says Lisa, giggling very loudly at the end of the wire (yes, wire, we are old school). Yesssss! But does she know why, because it’s her, we say yes and rush onto the dance floor? “I know people who have experienced disco for realin their adolescence, and for whom it is like going to the dark side of the force ! She triumphs in the receiver, her ears ringing. “It’s the hindsight that allows everything, I think. I don’t know how I would have felt in those years with that music. You had to choose sides. You couldn’t be both Motörhead (from which she took over the epic Ace of Spades) and KC with his Sunshine Band. “Blasphemy! »
“Enough time has passed for the ear to hear the good that was in there. When you dissect, when you delve into Chic, Nile Rodgers, it’s incredible how funk, jazz are brilliantly integrated into it. The level of excellence of the musicians is amazing. If you weren’t into dancing, you could easily dismiss all that without understanding the truly superior quality of the music and the musicians. She says the same about her small team of champions: “Mico Roy and Léandre Bourgeois, from the Hôtesses d’Hilaire, my accomplice Ben Morier, they really tried to recreate sounds and rhythms with maniacal precision. The idea was for it to be perfect disco. It couldn’t be all wrong. »
Belinda’s fault
It’s all Belinda’s fault, isn’t it? (Lisa’s previous record, it should be remembered, was a voluntary and playful break in the world of bingo, where the singer embodied a larger-than-life Belinda. A treat of controlled shift.) “It was a pleasurable permission . Go all out, just to fool around. But by writing gross nonsense, all of a sudden, I had fun. As I had not had for a long time. I was carried. I was in a period where I had difficulty writing, I found that I looked more and more like an old version of myself. Banjo Lisa againguitar Lisa againmy life is shit again… It bothered me. Belinda to the rescue. “She freed me from myself!” It was bingo disco over the top, for fun. It reopened the floodgates of creativity. »
And Lisa LeBlanc, who had also let loose while making the album of the very free and no less formidable Édith Butler, found the state of before the first album, with all the experience of the sequel: the margin of maneuver, the verve, the sense of caricature, her way of saying what she feels in the service of the ultra-precise piling of disco. From the first title, Why do today, an ode to procrastination, his to-do list is a miracle of accuracy, a bliss of prosody in four-foot verse. “Pass the broom / pass the mop / call my mother […] going outside / it wouldn’t hurt me”: imagine Upside Down of Diana Ross with these words. It’s the right size.
“The voice is like an instrument. It has to come in time. Constraint, when you write and you’re inspired, that’s perfect for someone like me. The lines come to me in the beat, it doesn’t wait. » In the portrait of society that is gossipa fabulous James Brown style funk, we are teleported to Tim Horton’s AND on the dance floor with Lisa: ” gossip / I go to Tim Horton’s to find out / what is it gossip / A doub doub coffee with three Timbits / gossip / gossip / I want to know gossip “. The syncope of the rhythm can be heard even in the words: gossss-sip, gossss-sip! Doub-doub Tim-bits! Masterful recreation!
Disco à la Lisa can say it all. “There are three subjects in the album. There are songs that talk about the “overproductivity” side that I find quite Mongolian at the moment, the unhealthy obsession that I express from two sides, in Why do today and In the juice. Basically, what I’m saying is: give up on us! Can you relax for a bit without someone telling me how to be happy? A handful of songs, the most descriptive and local, are almost scenes of life in and around Rosaireville: gossip, Gossip II, The Acadian menu.
Dance to get better
And, casually, interfere in the lot of songs that ask the question that matters: how do you feel good? Between you pi me pi the wooden cordwhose words “weigh a ton”, would have been almost unbearable in intimate folk: “If it continues the same / I’ll maybe get lost in the cracks of the couch / I’ll join the chip crumbs”. The disco-funk is life-saving here, and opens the way to the two most revealing and not at all disco tracks of the album: Powder in the eyeswith its tragic string arrangements and guitar solo à la Wichita Linemanby Glen Campbell, and then the very, very tender and very acoustic Seems easy to mewith its stylish intro Stairway to Heaven (it’s on purpose).
“I really like the person I chu / when I’m with you / Pi I really like the person you are / when you’re with me”, she sings softly: a kind of sequel to KraftDinner, ten years later. “It takes maintenance, as I say in the song, but I now think it can be a healthy relationship in the long run. The big disco binge of the shows to come will not just be a release. “It will be crazy, but above all it will be about well-being. »