The multidisciplinary artist Soleil Launière has drawn from his Innu origins a first soul-roots album full of finesse.
Taueu is a word meaning “in the middle” in Innu-Amun. Soleil Launière, a multidisciplinary artist who expresses herself as much through theater and performance as through singing, made it the title of her first album and it’s not for nothing: she clearly put a lot of her soul into it .
From the first track of the album, hearing the instantly recognizable voice of Joséphine Bacon reciting a text, we know that we will enter a spiritual and poetic world. Soleil Launière was born to an Innu father and a Quebecois mother in Mashteuiatsh, near Roberval in Lac-Saint-Jean, and it is particularly her Innu origins that are at the heart of Taueu, even if she sings as much in English and in French as in Innu-Amun.
“In a process of reappropriation of culture and language”, Soleil Launière also sings in an invented language on two tracks, without it seeming strange or inappropriate. On the contrary, Era Ew, for example, is an evocative song in homage to the territory, which starts slowly and builds in power. A bit like this album which plays a lot on the concept of duality.
Whether it is when she gives voice to missing or murdered women (MMIWG2S), when she embodies the concept of Two-Spirit or when she evokes the Lac Saint-Jean of her childhood (Piekuakami), the singer-songwriter offers an album of great depth, written with great accuracy and finesse.
His voice, very accurate and very embodied, is often moving and contributes to creating an atmosphere of contemplation, just like the sung or recited interludes.
And the soul-roots music blends perfectly with the subject, in a universe that breathes, but which is also deeply rooted. This is certainly the touch of Simon Walls, co-director earlier this year of Kanen’s excellent album, but also thanks to the contribution of a host of collaborations, in particular Chloé Lacasse, Geneviève Toupin and Vincent Carré from Chances.
Taueu is certainly an intimate and inhabited journey, but one in which we never feel confined. It’s because it comes from the heart, in short from the center, from a sensitive and intelligent, incarnated and true creator.