My favorite season is starting: music festivals. Armed with a Sharpie, I jubilantly circle all the concerts that interest me in the programming. Always a real headache. Too many possibilities, heartbreaking choices… Great problems. Without forgetting those moments when I arrive at the Place des Festivals with a precise schedule in mind. A voice, a melody, a rhythm calls to me, I hold on to my feet and ears, and I forget the initial plan. More and more, in my relationship with art and music, I like accidents, the unexpected and risk.
The 35e edition of the Francos de Montréal began for me on Saturday with a stop in the cozy cocoon of the Cinquième Salle at Place des Arts to meet up with Albin de la Simone. The show opened with the magnificent and gently melancholy The next hundred years. Albin surrounded himself for the occasion with three talented Montreal musicians: the ingenious guitarist Joseph Marchand, the solid keyboardist Virginie Reid and Robbie Kuster on drums, who we knew in another era alongside Patrick Watson, remarkable delicacy and inventiveness in his approaches to rhythm.
“As we don’t bring our food to the restaurant, we don’t bring our musicians to Quebec,” joked Albin in an interview with colleague Philippe Papineau. This risk, after all not so daunting when bringing together musicians of such high caliber, promised delicious asperities since the four had only two days to rehearse together. But risk, we have observed, generates keen attention, entirely devoted to the moment, an increased quality of presence. The public had the pleasure of seeing artists who were very attentive to each other in action. It was in the movements on stage that we saw tiny blunders, which made this imperfect moment unique, precious — and perfect in the end.
Between numerous songs about fading love, the French musician also sings about the mourning of a woman after an abortion (Mireille 1972), very delicately. Through the eyes of a loving but exasperated father, he dedicates a song to his teenager (Your mother and I). My fiancé and I made us laugh a lot because we recognized ourselves in this portrait. Besides, our teenager was a stone’s throw away, at the Yes* show (ex-Yes Mccan, ex-Dead Obies, ex-pimp in the series Runaway). “I bet she’s in the front row, shall we see?” »
Don’t tell him, but we went to check by sneaking around the side of the Desjardins Stage on the esplanade and, indeed, the flesh of our flesh was planted directly in front in the middle, in front of the security gate, with her friend, arms in the air, screaming the words. We often wonder how to pass on a love of culture to our teenagers, but we sometimes forget to look at how they experience it.
My daughter, when she loves an artist – as is the case for Lana Del Rey, Les Louanges, Lorde, Hubert Lenoir and now Yes* -, builds a cult for him, and does not tolerate being anywhere other than at the premieres. lodges. She arrives at the show hours in advance, doesn’t move from there, no matter the sun beating down and the heat. There is something pure and so enthusiastic in this bond that unites him to music. At the end of the concert, when possible, she overcomes her embarrassment to go greet her idols and take a photo with them, greeting them and calling them “Sir” and “Madam”.
I salute the Francos de Montréal team, which succeeds in attracting a new generation of music lovers by programming free outdoor concerts that will delight them. Making young people love French songs, not just because it is in French, firstly because it is excellent, is a fight against the algorithms that we must lead, a mission to never abandon.
Speaking of a new generation, three beautiful specimens were brought together on the stages of the MTelus in the show The King, the Rose and the Lou[p]a nod to the mythical I saw the wolf, the fox, the lion of Vigneault, Charlebois and Leclerc. I saw each of them solo last year at the Tadoussac Song Festival. Ariane Roy and Lou-Adriane Cassidy, bursting with all their fire and intensity on the main stage; Thierry Larose alone on guitar on Pointe-de-l’Islet in the early morning, under a light rain, in front of the mouth of the river.
These three raw talents were first brought together two years ago on the initiative of Laurent Saulnier, former pillar of the Francos programming. The one-night stand turned into a long-term relationship, and the trio, touring since then, has just released an album of live recordings. Lou-Adriane Cassidy has just won the Félix-Leclerc prize, after her two other acolytes in previous years. The tour is coming to an end — don’t miss them.
Even if I would have taken, in certain angular songs which lent themselves to it, even more rock explosiveness (I will rinse my ears to the sound of Vulgaires Machins in August at the Festival du Bûcheux de Saint-Pamphile), I do not I didn’t shy away from my pleasure. I love seeing this post-pandemic, post-#MeToo generation take their place and assert themselves.
Lou-Adriane and Ariane write songs in which they name their desire, but also others in which they note its absence: Between my legs / I feel nothing, I feel nothing / In my stomach / There’s nothing, there’s nothingsings first; Give me everything you want / Tell me your name so I can erase it / I would like to think I’m in love / I won’t be a girl within reach anymore, hums the second. I think back to Albin de la Simone, who addresses the subject of abortion and the mourning that follows in song, based on his masculine sensitivity… It seems to me that we are moving in the right direction.
On my way home, I remembered the summers without festivals that we have experienced recently, and all the creativity deployed to try to provoke, through the screens, somewhat in vain, those chills that I felt during the evening at the Francos… I am delighted that this is behind us and I hope you too can enjoy it this summer. Happy festival season.