Review | The Richard Séguin of the great days

Richard Séguin presented Thursday evening at the Outremont Theater the first of two shows to open Coup de cœur francophone. A moving and galvanizing show, in which the 70-year-old singer-songwriter shows that he is more relevant than ever.

Josee Lapointe
The Press

The singer, who is on tour throughout Quebec, had not been on stage for five years. When he came to join his musicians at the start of the show, even before a single note of music was played, his smile said a lot about his pleasure to be there. ” Hi Hi ! “, he launched to the public at the end of the first song, in a joyful simplicity.

It was the Richard Séguin of the great days that we were entitled to, in form and in voice – yes, on his new album Links placeshis interpretation sometimes seems fragile, don’t worry, the power is always there, but also the accuracy and nuance.

The impression that the singer does not age will not leave us of the evening, even when he sings the lucid and poignant Since : “ Since I have a little time left/Since our words last longer… »

From the first bars of Staying up, rearranged in Americana style – banjo, guitars, drums – we see that there is not much left of pop-rock in Richard Séguin’s repertoire. Without bass, surrounded by three exceptional musicians, Raphaël D’Amours and Simon Godin on guitars, Alexis Martin on percussion, he gives his songs, the oldest as well as the most recent, a timeless twist that draws on northern root music -American, bluegrass, country, folk.

He thus offers a diversified journey with a vibrant coating, in which the arrangements make room for all kinds of guitars, from lapsteel (Close to the aspens), electric guitar (Cry for me) or Hawaiian (Double life), and of course to the harmonica (the dylanesque Roadie).

The result smells of the road and wide open spaces, and all this breathing leaves room for each word. Just like the projections which come to support the subject, fuzzy images in black and white or with a little color, almost abstract, which are sometimes printed on the musicians for a most successful effect coming to accentuate the cohesion of the group.

In the room, listening is also palpable so dense it is. The audience is mostly made up of people who lined up in front of the Spectrum to see the Richard Séguin of the great years. The melancholy of passing time brought up some tears during under the chimneys Where Cry for me, but Richard Séguin himself gives us the gift of not falling into nostalgia in the presentations of his songs. He has his heart in the present and his eyes to the future, and it is the relevance of his word, which has remained consistent over the decades, that is just as moving, if not more so.

Double At the edge of time (on migrants, which dates from 2016) and What do we leave them (written, let’s remember, in 2006) will therefore have filled our eyes with water. ” What do we leave them/a tree, a word, a gesture/the intoxication of a smile “: that he follow this call to responsibility with the angry Forest paths – which appears on his new album and which he dedicates to the collective Mères au front – speaks volumes about the depth of the repertoire as much as about the commitment that drives it.

In the second part of this 90-minute show without intermission, the singer alternates between delicate songs from his new album (the very beautiful We would like and A little poetrywritten by the poet Hélène Dorion, Close to the aspensmoving tribute to his mother) and his great unifying hymns – Double Life, America Dayspades The wandering angel, which has lost none of its evocative power, and in which it offers a bewildering vocal performance. The intimate and the vast follow one another, between the country of childhood and the inhabited country, with a look and a sensitivity to the world that have not changed.

“As Félix said, I’m not a singer, I’m a man who sings,” said Richard Séguin before intoning, a cappellahis Little hymn to the great ranka text by Hugo Latulippe that concludes his most recent album.

“These territories are our temples,” says the last sentence. Richard Séguin is surely the most eloquent guardian, the one who “stayed upright”, with both feet firmly planted on the stage.