1. There is nothing I am not, Arielle Soucy
There is soul in spades in this first album from rookie of the year Arielle Soucy. With her bilingual folk songs that evoke the sacred, the singer and multi-instrumentalist immerses us in a world as luminous as it is melancholy, where arpeggiated guitars are king. And what about the vocal harmonies, both current and ancient, beautiful enough to make you believe in the divine. As a bonus, a few gusts of autoharp and drums give substance to all this soul. Amen.
2. Ready When You Are, Planet Giza
The discographic surprise of spring, which always warms us on the edge of winter with its clever blend of soul, jazz, trap and house. With this first real album, the Quebec collective of beatmakers hip-hop (Tony Stone, DoomX and Rami B) discovered how to compose damn good songs, and in the process transformed into a neo-soul–rap orchestra capable of measuring its grooves to those of the best American colleagues — or Quebecers, well, greetings to Kaytranada.
3. The people we love, Philippe Brach
We enter this fifth album with a big burst of yellow laughter: it’s Brach’s oblique way, never where we expect it. His folk oscillates between the very simple and the very orchestrated, outbursts of joy which make the melancholy, the heavy observations, the minefield almost pleasant. The flexibility of the musicians, Robbie Kuster, Étienne Dupré, Nicolas Basque (the hard core) allows for grooves as much as the strangeness of the handsome madman Brach. This results in an album that touches and tickles, shocks and caresses. And who grieves, on purpose.
4. We must leave now, Maude Audet
It presents itself in black and white, between fear and modesty, and then the album opens and it’s dazzling. Beneficent. The music unfolds. A type of French orchestration from the 1960s. Baroque pop song at its best. With her accomplice Mathieu Charbonneau, Maude goes from happiness to happiness. Everything happens at the right time: the bass on peak, the strings of the Esca Quartet, the drum rolls like Procol Harum, Mara Tremblay for a duet that wards off fear. The most beautiful car ride of the year.
5. Goodnight Summerland, Helena Deland
Anyone who still has a pair of ears and a beating heart can only be touched by Goodnight Summerland, a second album inhabited by the memory of Helena’s mother, lost to illness. A fine melodist, Deland imbues her songs with a serene, but resigned atmosphere, never starched or weighed down by mourning; it is, on the contrary, the album of a testimony finally liberated, of words launched into the universe praying that they be heard, carried by dry guitars and poignant vocal harmonies.
6. Free electrons of Quebec, Population II
“I know it’s at the end / You know it’s art”, sings Pierre-Luc Gratton on the piece It’s at the end, taken from this second album by the group completed by Tristan Lacombe and Sébastien Provençal. A true blast of rock, this album with a perfectly apt title skillfully merges progressive, psychedelic and heavy metal ambiances – all while remaining very Quebecois. As if Aut’chose summoned Black Sabbath and Genesis. It’s both melodic and cacophonous, but definitely a let-off.
7. Queens, Ingrid St-Pierre
The songs, one by one, emerged. Without defined direction. Without a theme, a priori. Each in their own corner of paradise. The garden where it is written. With the pretty rhymes and all the trimmings. And then Queens showed up at the last minute, elected title song by acclamation. A “frontal” song, that’s Ingrid’s word. A sovereign song, which speaks for all women. Which justifies the thirteen other songs on the album, that they speak of love, friendship, old age, illness, mourning. Queens, all of them.
8. Sprint!, Thierry Larose
With a Polaris Prize nomination and two ADISQ mentions — without forgetting the concert series The King, the Rose and the Lou[p] —, 2023 will have been a big year for Thierry Larose. It was buoyed by his brilliant second album Sprint!, where he demonstrated a mastery of the art of folk-rock songwriting. We hear, yes, Dylan-style keyboards, but also a bunch of different inspirations which fit together surprisingly. Also, Larose assumes his voice and his words, and it is beautiful, feverish and strong.
9. In the second, Karkwa
It will have been a dozen years since his last tremors, but it will have been worth it. On this new album, Karkwa has managed to bring to life once again the magic that unites the five members. They have each gained ground, and above all, they have managed to produce very good songs which respect the signature of the group without being redundant. In the second is also a record that “grows” with listening and which does not pale in comparison to the rest of Karkwa’s rich repertoire.
10. To Hold It All, Kim Albert
The mourning of a mother, instructions for use? No. To Hold It All is an album where the Montreal folk singer searches for her way through the pain of loss, losing herself in it. Questions arise, answers unclear. Kim makes songs that are almost not songs, just full of melody. The singer takes time, that’s all she has. So it takes her almost 10 minutes to fit everything into the title song, and she can’t do it. Yes, the voice is beautiful, we are lulled. But nothing is resolved. Life goes on.
11. Step by step, Quiet Sounds for a Loud World, Marianne Trudel
The composer, pianist and band leader Marianne Trudel highlighted her twenty-year career this fall by offering three albums of original compositions. The solo chapter is the most singular and innovative of the triptych, Trudel taking a step aside from “traditional” jazz, revealing his curiosity for contemporary music, moving from the piano to the harmonium on these harmonically and melodically sophisticated pieces. A moment of beauty and serenity, between post-minimalism and improvised music.
12. New administration, Philippe B
“Everything has changed, everything is the same”, sings Philippe B on the eponymous piece from his sixth album, New administration. The musician succeeds here in telling what the arrival of a child disrupts a life, but in the most poetic way possible. He also succeeds in making these great torments universal with angles of attack that can be transposed to his life. Musically, Philippe B “does Philippe B”, he told us. No revolution here, just Philippe B, that’s not bad.
13. The nest, Blanche Baillargeon
A heart and melodies. Neither jazz, nor song, nor fusion either: the joy of a second album in freedom. An album that carries away, delights. It’s so improbable, a priori: songs that aren’t really songs, instrumental sequences that surprise and then rock. Artist’s response: “I think it’s because I compose while singing. ” So. It’s the wonderfully unpredictable result of marathons of composition, without waiting for inspiration. Mastery and integration of knowledge, desire for uninterrupted melodies. The musician has found her way.
14. Popular art, Nicolas Boulerice, Olivier Demers with Robert Deveaux
The meeting between two related musical traditions, those of Quebec and Acadia, results here in a project of astonishing modernity. It’s all in the stripped-down, even bare approach of these orchestrations made of violins, hurdy-gurdy, percussion and vocal harmonies, first and foremost the one, unvarnished – and poignant on There on these mountains —, by violinist and singer Robert Deveaux, originally from Cape Breton, who contributes just as much with his vast knowledge of the Maritime repertoire.
15. Ahora Más Que Nunca, Pelada
The world goes into a tailspin, Pelada stands up to invite us to dance, knife between his teeth. The Montreal duo (Chris Vargas on vocals, Tobias Rochman on electronic violin making) does a useful job: anti-capitalist, fiercely feminist, in defense of the environment and the proletariat, Pelada has many preys that he pursues to the rhythm frantic with his powerful techno-trance-electro-hardcore productions. A second career album that is punchy, courageous, urgent and necessary.