How was she going to make the album show The horses of pleasure: Boulay sings Bashung belongs to him beyond homage? How not to fade away like behind Piaf or Reggiani? The album, already an improbable feat, told us at least this: Isabelle was going to find.
And indeed, it takes her to launch a show in June with the song Out of seasonfrom the album Songs for the winter months. Manner of meaning: I come from here, from Quebec, from Gaspésie, from this country of coldness where sometimes one sweats in the North. Way of saying: I am also from France like all the Boulays, and my North American culture is originally French. And in this, claiming the repertoire of an Alain Bashung is neither strange nor foreign. Bashung and Quebec have known, frequented, loved each other. At the Francos, precisely, when we said FrancoFolies.
His welcome monologue is particularly warm, combined with us, his post-pandemic return to the scene more than due: “We should take three years off our birth certificates. So I’m 48! she exclaimed. She begins with a little tour of her house, revisiting the albums of her 1990s, better than here (Never far enough), states of love (I will forget you, I will forget you), going so far as to recall his very first album, written by Daniel DeShaime. The one that critics slammed (not without reason): the aptly named Should not. Rehabilitation exercise? Simple message: Isabelle Boulay assumes all her choices. Not crossed out, so she does it again And my heart takes a pounding, A bit of innocence.
His choices and nothing but his choices
Are we more forgiving? No. Hateful songs yesterday as today. But free to her. In the same way that it takes up a splendid title by Stéphan Eicher, You do not owe me anything. Song that she “played on repeat ad infinitum on her car CD player, she says. In the same way that she resumes The meteor by Stephen Faulkner (the perfect choice to talk about his son). From DeShaime to Plamondon to Faulkner, from Eicher to Biolay, the path necessarily passes through Bashung.
So this is it. That’s how she does it. She prepares her ground in her own way, leads the public quite naturally to the goal. Arrived in Bashung, we understood. We are ready. What Isabelle wants, she can. We follow her, seven tracks from the album Boulay sings Bashung follow one another like so many close friends rediscovered, my small business To The reed tidePassing by Dare Josephine, At night I lie, I pass like a caravan, lady dream. We will have been from Matane to Bâton-Rouge via Paris. And we will have said yes, enthusiastically sharing the beautiful challenge of the interpreter. What will she do next? Songs written by her? Nothing is impossible for Isabelle Boulay.
Maude Audet’s baroque song takes off
Let us underline in broad strokes a frankly ideal curtain raiser. Her big arms outstretched, her long sequined parachute dress, Maude Audet floated in the room, leading her acoustic guitar to the delicate and delicious tunes that make up her most recent album. We have to leave now. The baroque folk arrangements lift it up and take us with it. We walk through space and time, at times not far from a Marie Laforêt, even the brilliant melodies of the British Zombies, everything that is dear to the tender heart of the 1960s.
This is saying something: this universe is so captivating, so captivating that the spectators will have forgotten a little that these enchanting minutes with Maude Audet prepared the way for the return of their beloved Isabelle Boulay. Magic of the Francos: a carefully listened first part of three quarters of an hour can constitute in itself a whole and memorable experience. And make you want to see and see another Maude Audet again.