And if Portrait of a Mariannethe almost seven-minute bravura piece on which opens Sprint!was in fact, like Like a Rolling Stone of Dylan, a kind of self-portrait disguised as a letter to someone else? “You can do whatever you want,” sings Thierry Larose, as if talking to himself and, above all, as if he wanted to tell us that he had given himself all the permissions.
Ambition. This is Thierry Larose’s most precious quality. Behind his nonchalant look, the darling of the new Quebec song is able to load a text-river of impressionist images and symbols associated with the French Revolution (Portrait of a Marianne), without passing for a pure megalomaniac. Thierry Larose asks himself vast questions, but always has the means to provide them with fascinating answers.
There is nothing arrogant about this immense ambition, on the contrary, and rather seems to be fueled by an inexhaustible admiration for his little clan. In whale and methe winner of the Félix-Leclerc prize names four songs: Indian summer, The island tour And mile after milebut also Okay okay, written by Philémon Cimon, but created by Lou-Adriane Cassidy, one of his main collaborators. By placing three absolute classics and a recent work side by side, the 25-year-old musician clearly speaks of his confidence in his generation’s ability to create great things.
Co-directed with Alexandre Martel (who was also behind Cantalou), Sprint! abounds on all sides and teems with a bundle of references that never feel old. For what ? Because on this second album, driven both by a phenomenal instinct for melodic synthesis and by a refusal to moderate its effects, Larose always seems aware of who he is borrowing from, from the strokesian Lionheart To As in my memorieswhich Marie Michèle Desrosiers could have performed on Where did the wedding go?
If “the drama is heightened when the chorus rises from its ashes”, the euphoria is also heightened, at the exit of a bridge as galvanizing as that of Tomorrow, tomorrow, an apotheosis song filled with a moving faith in the future. Thierry Larose roars, blushes, his mouth full of confetti, and we dance with him all night long.
Rock
Sprint!
Thierry Larose
well done music