Review of People We Love | Philippe Brach on full display

After a long absence, Philippe Brach deployed great resources to bring his superb compositions on stage, during the Montreal show of his tour The people we love.

Philippe Brach never fails to create shows for his audience that remain in memories and hearts. Often, in addition to the musical performance, everything that is in the margins allows Philippe Brach to amaze his audience, to make them laugh, to entertain them in the most offbeat way possible: costumes, characters, curious moments straight out of feverish dreams.

There was a bit of all that, Saturday evening, during the show entitled Mondo Delicatessen, to Montreal. But less than usual. This time, Brach mainly focused on music. He has focused on delivering his pieces as masterfully as possible, the most recent of which have fewer words, more space, and leave room for instrumental deployments.

So, rather than a colorful set or a theatrical production, he surrounded himself with musicians. From a lot of musicians. A set of strings, three guitarists, a percussionist, a drummer (surrounded by more cymbals than necessary), a set of brass instruments and another set of winds. Behind the keyboard, Gabriel Desjardins, who created the superb arrangements, was also conductor.

All this on the stage of the Métropolis (Philippe Brach refuses to call it MTelus), where the singer would perhaps have been a little cramped… if he had not had a walkway installed at the front -stage, an “ego ramp” which allowed him to be closer to the crowd.

The catwalk was also a good tool for a surprising start to the show. He arrived like a superstar, on a Kid Rock song. A hat imitating an orange mushroom on his head, but no shoes on his feet, a satin dressing gown on his back, over a well-tailored gray suit: the outfit didn’t really make sense, but it was striking. With an invented arrogant attitude, he began to speak in English, while the crowd cheered him and the jets of flames made the scene even more ostentatious.

Then Brach became Brach again and confessed to his audience: basically, he was preparing another one of his concept shows, he was supposed to wear a “star outfit”, act like “a pile of shit the whole time” and “send everyone to shit”. The goal was to criticize stardom, something like that. But he realized a few weeks ago that “the vibe isn’t about that”.

After a long absence, the singer-songwriter promised “two or three nonsense to come”, but above all a show in which he put love.

Grandiose… but refined

The show began with Crystal. And from then on, we felt the love he spoke of, all the care that was put into this show. He continued on Last Call.

Each time, and as will be the case very often in the rest of the show, the musicians who accompanied him elevated the pieces, grandiosely translating this complexity which sometimes threatens to fade into livebut which, here, has rather been increased tenfold.

Born to be wild, Our blue desires, Tic Tac, Alice, My white hands… In this show, Brach presents around twenty songs taken from his entire repertoire, in a well-considered sequence, a stripped-down but effective staging, co-signed by Philippe Brach and Nicolas Ouellet. Sébastien Pedneault’s lighting design is brilliant throughout.

Despite all this instrumental deployment, this force of execution which delights and amazes, we observe a certain sobriety in this show that Philippe Brach has built, probably because we have his crazy performances from the last decade as a comparison. We take in the sights, but not through artifice, rather through the quality of the interpretation, simply. His recent albums allow long moments which belong only to the musicians around him and which create splendid flights. For example, at the time of Fear is avalanche or Autumn suns, where the acoustic guitar and the orchestra coexist with grace and panache. The instruments do everything equally on You want to kill yourself, right?where Brach delivers the three heartbreaking phrases of the song lying on the stage.

Brach is always very funny when he speaks to the crowd. He also allows himself to be critical through his jokes, as when he points out that the price of drinks at the bar is “less worse than the ticket administration fees” and then thanks the Ticketmaster company with great sarcasm. He also takes the time to thank Karl Tremblay and Les Cowboys Fringants, the first ones he saw live, three nights in a row in fact, and who led him to play too.

When he sings, he is captivating. His voice is controlled, he is agile in his interpretation. When he doesn’t have a guitar in his hands, he wanders happily around the stage in socks, making us also want to shake our bodies without restraint to the sound of the music.

He had guaranteed two or three stupidities. The moment when Anna Frances Meyer (member of Deuxluxes) replaces him to perform And it’s not over, without any explanation, corresponds rather well to the kind of “silliness” that Brach likes to bring into his performances. Back on stage, he tells us that the song is a prediction for the future: “if you think it sucks, it’s not over, it’s only the beginning,” he says. laughing, faithful to the pessimistic side that we know of him.

A marriage proposal, a few flashes of flames, long thanks, an encore where everyone stays in their place because it would take too long to get everyone off stage, then a second encore later, that’s the end. And when we left the MTelus, we still felt all this love infused into the show. That pleasant feeling that only great artists give us.

Philippe Brach is in concert in Quebec until June 2024.