Marie-Annick Lépine, anxious by nature, did not have time to worry. It was as if she had been teleported to L’Assomption after the last recall. From the triumphant Bell Center three times with the Cowboys Fringants (45,000 spectators, it’s a crowd!) To the promotion of a third solo album more than personal, a small half of a week later, it makes you dizzy, no ? But no. “The day after Saturday night at the Bell Center, I was at a friends party for my daughters at bowling in Repentigny, with blacks lights and dance music. I came back to earth quite quickly, thank you, even before thinking about releasing my record! “
She smiles from her edge of the FaceTime app, chuckling an especially gleeful laugh, not even giddy. For her, that’s life. Not the routine, though, the contrast is more extreme than usual – the extraordinary ordinary of the Cowboys Fringants! -, but not dizzying. It is the down to earth side of the group, well rooted in its great Repentigny, where it all started, where it all comes back (before leaving). Balance necessary, as for everyone, although to the power of 45,000. This third album by Marie-Annick, entitled Between Beaurivage and L’Ange-Gardien (the streets that surround his childhood neighborhood in L’Assomption) is a particularly well-balanced record, a work of tenderness and truth, wisdom and freedom, sadness and lightness.
“It’s a project that the pandemic has made possible, a record born of boredom, of the need to do something. To find my balance, precisely. It was also, at 43, the time to look behind and ahead. “It starts hitting you harder.” Cancers that come out everywhere, not just among loved ones, but among those who write to us: we are a community, gang Cowboys, what happens to the people who follow and support us, it touches us. My parents are getting older and will not always be able to stay at the house in L’Assomption. »She made a song both very beautiful and a little sad at the same time, You want to stay : “Between Beaurivage and L’Ange-Gardien / I see your grief […] The cedars have grown / the children gone / but you want to stay ”.
It’s a project that the pandemic has made possible, a record born of boredom, of the need to do something. To find my balance, precisely.
She took advantage of this suspended time to quietly sew her quilt of emotions and observations, with the help of Pierre Fortin and Jean-Sébastien Chouinard, with the voice of Catherine Durand (and sometimes the choirs of the Cowboys). Fine confection. Caring music. Acute sense of finish. The album opens and closes with instrumental pieces, Beaurivage Street and Boulevard de L’Ange-Gardien : floating atmosphere at the start, upside down sounds, Pink Floyd spirit, a bit of a time machine. The end is rocking, peaceful and comforting. “We did them at the end, when we had all the songs. It gives direction, I think. This album, we go in and we go out. »As many times as we want. Endless beginning.
Compassion and lucidity
“I take in baggage / what is necessary / love and doubt / to counter shipwrecks / I stay on earth / and I eat my crusts / The road will be long / I hope / I take courage / d ‘a new mother / I do my best / to counter the mirages / I remain sincere / look not too serious / Life is a game / I hope ”. So she describes the round trip of life in When the bustards come back. In road folk-rock. “I always end up coming home. “
Way marked, traveled. Potential renewal, a feeling of hope, but without blindness. The world is beautiful and ugly : it’s the title of a song, at the heart of the album. Marie-Annick sings of “trusting life / even if even if” as much as she sings “like the dryer I eat my stockings”. Compassion and lucidity go hand in hand. “In life, we are left alone in our decisions. But we are alone with others. Whether it’s a music group or childhood friends, whether it’s neighbors, family, kids, we’re bonded. Whether it is a district, a city, a country, we are linked. This album is mine, and it is that of all those who participated in it. Balance, we understand, is a matter of conscience and humanity.