Roselle has wise reflections that she submits to us in the songs of her first career album, titled Dawn. Consequence of the pandemic, she explains, crossed “in the early twenties, years during which you learn to know yourself and to assert yourself. I realized that I need to denounce matters, to take a stand”, but to do so with the gentleness that characterizes his grain of voice, and the grooves soul, jazz, house and electro-pop that mark out his musical world.
At the heart of this album making the big stylistic difference between the jazzy song and the house refrain is the ballad Tired : “ I don’t give a shit about my hip circumference / The length of my legs, my nose, my hands, what difference does it make for you? / Whether I smear my face or not is up to me”. It had to come out, admits Roselle: “It’s a song that speaks above all of the pressures that one undergoes, as a woman, and which echo what I experienced. »
On the following, Roselle returns to the memory of a romantic relationship: “How your words made me very small / that even by doing the right thing / the fire caught on very quickly”.
Give yourself the right to experiment
On disc, the softness and the agility of his voice (discovered, precisely, with the emission The voice in 2019) contrast with the one who, at the end of the line, explains the genesis of her album.
This Roselle has resilience, verve, she speaks quickly, with a smile in her voice: “I find that we don’t let people experiment a lot, try things out,” she says alluding to, without the name, in the title track of the album, which begins with this verse: “The dawn rises in beautiful sheets / gently, takes me, rocks me in her arms / Under a ray of sunshine, my skin wakes up from blackout from yesterday “.
“Do the party, it should not be taboo, continues Roselle. It’s important to experience things in order to discover yourself without waiting to have reached the end of your life and regret everything you didn’t do sooner. »
After two years of pandemic, the desire to live life at full speed is all the more urgent for the young woman that she is. This is the main theme of the album which launched the career of the singer-songwriter from Lévis, an admirer of the work of Pierre Lapointe, Coeur de pirate and Ingrid St-Pierre who, at 17, made the leap to Montreal to study jazz singing at Cégep Saint-Laurent, after being trained in classical piano.
After having done three years of jazz at school, in a school context, I understand that there is a big part of this job that you have to learn on the job.
After the training, Roselle agreed to become the voice of The Lost Fingers, a “very formative” experience.
“After doing three years of jazz at school, in a school context, I understand that there is a big part of this profession that you have to learn on the job. I used to accompany myself on the piano when I gave concerts. I realized, after several months in The Lost Fingers, that being a singer is a lot of pressure and responsibility, and that forced me to take my place on a stage. I rediscovered the profession of interpreter, the importance of giving show. »
She is already excited at the idea of presenting the material from the album on stage, on September 21, at the Ministère, boulevard Saint-Laurent in Montreal. “I am living the dream of my life, I am releasing an album on which I have worked hard. I am happy to be able to arrive on the musical scene with an album of twelve songs of which I am proud. “With good reason, here is an attractive business card for the young musician, who is just beginning to embody her stage name.
Become Roselle
Where does the name Roselle come from? “It came a year ago, one morning, after a party family, she says. We were “brainstorming”, and there, my grandmother, sitting in the sun at the back of the gallery, jumped: “Oh my God, I found: Roselle! That’s my sister’s name!” It was not necessary to have an artist name, but I found it interesting to reduce it to a single word. And then my brother thought it was really cool that I had an artist name. He was telling me : “Come on, it’s boring, Rosalie Roberge!” »
Her brother, Vincent Roberge, also has his artist name, Les Louanges, and a small head start in his career over his younger sister, who regularly plays the backup singer at her concerts. Les Louanges also co-produces the song I was asking myself this questionone of the most danceable of the album, remixed by Misstress Barbara.
“On my album, I wanted to touch on different musical styles, to get closer to everything I like to do — a little jazz, a little soul, a little electro. And I invite people to listen to the album from beginning to end: I never listen to singles or playlists, I hate that. Artists have an intention when imagining their albums and the order in which the songs are presented. Wise reflection.