We imagined Sylvie Paquette alone with her guitar. In front of the river, surrendering to the pain, the painful voice, the tirelessly repeated chords that rock without really consoling. We could hear from here a sad, sad record, monotone melodies. A mourning for being loved so much that she would make it last, last, never to stop carrying it.
“Above all, I didn’t want an album of self-pity, I wanted the opposite of a disc of a soul in pain all alone, all alone, all alone. I wanted to pay homage to my love taken away by cancer, worthy of her, she who loved beauty so much in everything. I wanted a concentrate of beauty, a rallying of beautiful people. »
And that’s what we get: a short and beautiful seventh album, six sumptuously arranged songs, strings, brass, woodwinds, a great wave of love breaking at the zenith of the day. Full sun. A gift. “There is all the pain / That remains / I try to make it a dance / That I could offer / like this / A pretty bow,” she sings in The projector.
“Quite naturally, there were meetings, the collaboration of beautiful humans capable of greatness and sensitivity. It was Andrea Lindsay who told me about François Richard, who had worked with Alexandre Désilets for the whole orchestral side of his big project: I wanted to put everything into these songs, and he knew how to make it immense and light at the same time weather. »
Orchestrations without heaviness
The great orchestrators are magicians: their delicacy justifies all outbursts, the sketched melodies become, in their skilled hands, frescoes.
A bit like Daniel Bélanger had, at the time of the album Tam Tam, revealed the musical possibilities of Sylvie Paquette’s songs, François Richard acts here as a vector of wonder. What she had in her head and heart, he not only heard, but transposed, magnified. “I wanted it to lift, to rise to the sky. As Anne Hébert writes in her very last poem, which Sylvie had in store since the great adventure of the album Original land: “Surely it’s sunny somewhere / Among the confused galaxies”. The weather is very beautiful in this poem that has become a song exactly when the composer needed it.
Everything is in the best place I will stay close. Very close to them, in their own way. “I met people, and I found my world. There’s Rick Haworth, my lifelong guitarist; Philippe Brault, who agreed to come just to play bass; Sheila Hannigan, cellist; my dear Daniel Bélanger who, in one day, put into words what I had composed with Beyries. I have this chance that comes with time: real loyalties. »
Sell-by date
The album, born of a very personal mourning, was transformed into a land of welcome. “There is the pandemic, and there, there is the war in Ukraine, we are all faced with this choice: to hide, to stay alone in our corner with our misfortune and our fears, or to live. With the others. In the light. »
A rereading of Your face, the immortal from Ferland, closes the album. “And I redraw it, and the wind blows it back / Your face,” she sings. This disc reminds us that there is the present in the word presence. Presence of those who have left, presence of those who are still there. “I am blessed. We were able to get married shortly before she left. It was a big party. Everyone we love and who loves us came. This love is more alive than ever. And me too, until my expiry date! »
Big laughter on the phone. “I just don’t have to catch COVID between now and the launch…” She giggles again, on a background of concern: who knows? How you can feel blessed and have stage fright. See you on May 10, at the Ministry.