Thirteen years after Les chemins de verre, Karkwa announced his return on Wednesday evening with the song Parfaite on screen and then his video directed by Charles-Antoine Olivier and Xavier Bossé. This one features Quebec actress Pascale Bussières. Louis-Jean Cormier, Stéphane Bergeron (drums), François Lafontaine (keyboards), Julien Sagot (percussion) and Martin Lamontagne (bass) have concocted a powerful piece with a catchy crescendo melody which, combined with the clip, fills the heart of emotions. Louis-Jean Cormier’s poetry paints images of great clarity: “A long passage between two waves / Who seek to bite / She passes and glides with exploit / With accuracy”. Quebec will have the scoop on Karkwa’s return to the stage since the band will be there on September 8, the day the album is released. Sherbrooke (November 24), Saguenay (November 25), Montreal (November 30, December 1 and 2) and Toronto (December 7) are the next stops.
Rescue marks the return of Alaclair Ensemble. Although Claude Bégin, KNLO, Eman, Ogden, and Vlooper have remained musically busy over the past few years, they haven’t released music collectively since America, vol. 2, in 2019. This meeting has a very specific objective, according to the press release that accompanies the song: “Responsible fathers who have decided to take the rescue of this Quebec culture into their own hands”. We will see on September 1, the day of the launch of the new album, if the group manages to accomplish its mission, but this first extract is encouraging. First, the beat of Vlooper is very well constructed: the western intro, the gradual layering of elements, the brilliant mixing; hat ! Alaclair Ensemble has also announced shows in Quebec City on September 7 and then in Montreal on September 29 and 30.
Nothing to do, we succumb once again to the charm of P’tit Belliveau. In addition to releasing his frankly nifty version of Edith Butler’s La 20 this week, the very productive Acadian singer offers a new piece entitled Ej m’en fus. We find his innate sense of catchy melody and his taste for simple pleasures, while he dreams of fleeing the constraints of life and disappearing, no matter where, with “not a reception bar” on his “phone even though his conscience reminds him to “think about the future”. Summery, happy, and as usual less light than it seems, here is a new earworm signed P’tit Belliveau, and that’s good.
