“I think it would help me to buff / if someone awarded me trophies! », announces Frank Custeau in Well done my heart!, the perky lament of an eternal child, who regrets that his slightest efforts are no longer praised, as when he was a kid. How not to sympathize?
Posted yesterday at 7:30 p.m.
The endearing slipper train obviously resumes with this new EP, The flying fishwhere he left off, with the funny and disarming Xenial Blues (2021). The Sherbrooke resident sang on this second solo album the folk’n’roll of a big soft flank, who struggles to trade his passion for smoking for the healthy lifestyle habits of jogging and saving money.
Disillusioned punk rocker, apostle of happy laziness and gentle insolence, king of nothing; Frank Custeau has been building since 2018, on the fringes of the mainstream, an unparalleled body of work in the Quebec musical landscape, both heir to Plume Latraverse and Fat Mike. An exceptional lyricist for whom self-mockery is second nature, the former Les Conards à l’Orange (a defunct ska group) manages to talk lightly about serious subjects such as financial precariousness, without minimizing their importance, while sticking its tongue out at this society for which there can only be success in hyperperformance. Increasingly at ease in a serious register, he adds with the title track a new entry to the local catalog of beautiful songs celebrating an extraordinarily simple and simply extraordinary love.
Supported by Alex Crow in the production, Custeau borrows on this minidisc fromamericana from The Band (the drums in Mosquitoes are dancing) and relies, more generally, on a form of colorful rock, to sing in chorus, music first useful to illuminate texts whose zaniness and originality do not manage to camouflage the sensitivity.
Frank Custeau would like to be presented with a trophy when he finally musters up the courage to face his pile of dirty dishes. Let’s award him a beautiful, sparkling one, for those flying fish.
folk-rock
The flying fish
Frank Custeau
Slam Discs