Review of Prudence is Denise | The improbable poetry of pontoons and soap boxes

And if the bearded men of The Band had been fascinated not by the imaginary of the American Civil War, but by that of the war that the ordinary man wages against himself every day in order not to be swallowed up by the banality ?

They might have recorded an album similar to Prudence est Denise by the Goyette brothers.

“Dreams often hold that with a tie wrap / magic sometimes leads us to the scrapyard”, philosopher Simon Laganière, alias Mario Goyette, in Soap Box. Two sentences that perfectly sum up this style specific to the famous Champlain family in the Mauricie region: planting the theater with their little rural portraits in a setting of a prosaic nature bordering on the supernatural, the better to dig into vast questions. In this case, that of what we sacrifice to ourselves, in the hope of transcending monotony.

Entitled Prudence est Denise, a joke that Laganière launches to his comrades when he leaves them at the end of a rehearsal, the fifth disc of the most authentic false brothers of the province meditates on great themes while once again pretending nothing: strength of nature whose wind “uncombs baldness” (Wizard of Oz), the relationship of the living to the dead (Bad medium) and the power of the masks that we put on to give ourselves the courage to face the day (Away from the rag).

Thanks to an Americana better dressed than ever, this short album (six songs and three pretty moriconnesque interludes signed Yannick Lambert-Brière) reminds us above all that Simon Laganière is one of the most underestimated songwriters of his generation, the story having rarely been generous towards those who put on their poetry the clothes of zaniness.

Who else but him can tear us away by singing the resistance of big boats? Baptized Ponton de mer, the piece de resistance of Prudence is Denise, a ridiculously poignant duo with Karl Tremblay of the Cowboys Fringants, gives itself the air of a nautical power ballad, but is perhaps less about boats than about this great solo trip that awaits us at the end of the quay of life.

Caution is the mother of safety ? The loyal tenacity of the Goyettes has been the mother of improbable beauty for more than 15 years.