Composed in 2008 but released only a few months ago on the album The nights of Repentigny, the song In business would have “sunk into total indifference after [avoir été] presented to the band, ”says its author Jean-François Pauzé. Yet it is with her yesterday that the Cowboys Fringants chose to open the first of the three concerts they will present at the Bell Center, and she came at the right time: “The Cowboys Fringants are back in service / We’re back in business ! / We are happy to do the milk run again / Even if it’s been done a hundred times, ”chanted Karl Tremblay.
In two dozen songs and a hundred grueling minutes, Les Cowboys Fringants thumbed their noses at the pandemic, bringing together thousands of fans at the Montreal temple of hockey who intended to do what they had more or less not done since March 2020: let go of their madman, everyone together. Dance, shout, jiggle. The orchestra – the four original members and their five accompanists – had planned the blow well, launching the ball on the capes of wheels by chaining the most furious of their repertoire.
But what was it on the floor that was taking shape Bye Bye Lou (from the album October, 2015) in the first minutes of the concert? What we haven’t seen for over a year and a half: a mosh pit ! The shock of the shoulders, the thrusts in the back, the joy in the collective release! That’s a lot, Les Cowboys Fringants: behind the lyrics that make you think, energetic rhythms that even go so far as to make the musicians lose control of their own song racing car. This mix of talk, engaged or sarcastic, and rock and country, with some hints of Irish music as on the recent and diabolical Crossing (from the Atlantic in 1774), a two-speed song about whiskey, reminded Karl Tremblay.
Already, The houses all the same, Pauzé was doing the pogo dance while strumming his guitar, while the brass, combined with Marie-Annick Lépine’s frenzied playing on the violin, whipped the fans. A first-class reunion between the fans and their band, the latter finally having the opportunity to do what they had been deprived of for too long, to play on a stage, of course, but above all to play the songs from the album. The Antipodes, celebrated during the ADISQ gala in 2020: Félix Rock album of the year, Best seller of the year, Group of the year and, taken from it, America is crying, Song of the year.
It arrived in the middle of the evening, when The Cowboys saw fit to bring us back to earth, after more than half an hour on the pedal to the floor – made it to Paris-Montreall (from the album Only wind, 2011), we began to see the bodies emerging from the parterre for a generous session of crowd surfing.
Came Nothing and its finale stretched as if it had remained a little blue bucane from the concerts of Genesis of two days ago, the big one of The High Mass (2004) then My boyfriend Rémi (of Union break, 2002), the chorus of fans lighting the modern lighters that our cell phones have become. America is crying was heard in person, on stage, for the first time at the Bell Center; the audience knew his text by heart – even better than Tremblay, who forgot one or two stanzas of a verse, no doubt seized by the emotion of a moment of communion between the fans and their new classic song which he had not yet lived with so much intensity.
The Cowboys reopened the machine for the rest of the show, giving pride of place to songs from Union break (Demonstration, Winter is coming, Happy Calvary) and The High Mass (Ti-ass, 8 seconds), concluding with antiquity Awikatchikaën, published 21 years ago on Motel Capri, and As long as we have love, taken from The expedition. As a reminder, among other things, the essential Shooting Stars, one of the most beautiful in the repertoire of the original Repentignois.
It felt good, this concert. Forget about the hassle, viral or otherwise, for an hour and a half, and live a moment, all together, without interposed screens. The Cowboys will do it again tonight and tomorrow, before returning on December 27 for an extra. The group will hit the road to Quebec on December 9 before going to Switzerland, Belgium and France throughout the month of February.