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Great Big Sea vs. Le Vent du Nord: FIGHT!

December 10, 2011 in Music | Permalink

Ladies and gentlemen, I gotta tell you, the fight for my playlist loyalties these past few months has been tremendous. I never thought that I would encounter any kind of music that could yank my attention for more than a few days running off of Great Big Sea–but apparently the entire genre of Quebecois traditional music, spearheaded by Le Vent du Nord but with generous help from Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer, De Temps Antan, and La Bottine Souriante, is giving my beloved B’ys a massive, massive run for their money.

In many ways, Le Vent have kind of become my Quebecois Great Big Sea. There are four of them, and certainly with the exception of the hurdy gurdy of M. Boulerice and the flying feet of M. Demers, the instrument lineup is very similar–fiddle, accordion, guitar, and bouzouki. (And as I think we’ve established at this point, I am extremely partial to pretty bouzouki players!) Vocal-wise, there are very, very few things on this planet that can make me swoon like the voices of The Doyle and The McCann, but the boys of Le Vent are coming close. Tight harmony will get me every time, especially on shanties–and Le Vent have got a couple in their arsenal that are laying down strong returning fire against “General Taylor” and “River Driver”.

But here’s the real challenge. How are they LIVE?

I have had it strongly suggested to me that Le Vent, in fact, gives better show than Great Big Sea. That, my friends, is a STRONG CLAIM INDEED. As any of you out there who have read my copious collection of GBS show writeups knows, I have a long, honorable, and passionate history of fangirling the hell out of Great Big Sea concerts. So Le Vent du Nord? They have an EXTREMELY HIGH BAR TO TOP.

March 1, 2012, O Internets, is the day I get to find out if they can do it.

I have secured for myself and userinfosolarbird tickets to our very first Le Vent du Nord concert, up in Vancouver BC. The venue is here, a community center, which suggests strongly to me that this is actually going to be a tinier show than I’ve been used to for a while ever since GBS started playing the Moore here in Seattle. I’m ALL FOR THAT. A great deal will depend, however, on the crowd! Don’t get me wrong, when I go to a GBS show the attraction is of course the B’ys, but a huge part of the fun is also the passionate response of the crowd. GBS fandom’s battle cry isn’t VERTICAL MOVEMENT! for nothing, after all.

Now, if this were a show in Montreal, I would absolutely expect a Le Vent crowd to go nuts–e.g., like the crowd in this video, going delightfully berserk for “Cre-mardi”! The critical question will be whether a Vancouver crowd will get similarly excited, and whether this will be a sit-in-chairs show, or a General Admission show.

So it is ON. Le Vent du Nord, your challenge is laid. You have the tools. You have the talent. But do you have the thermonuclear stage charisma that can magnetically pull me to my feet, get me clapping and stomping, and singing at the top of my lungs despite the fact that you’re singing in a language I don’t even speak? Because if you can pull that off, messieurs, I will happily make my concert battle cry bilingual, and will be crying “La danse verticale!”

Can you do it? I look very, very forward to finding out!

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Tune work tonight

December 2, 2011 in Music | Permalink

With two brand new flutes to break in, I’ve found myself wanting to practice as well as write for the last couple of nights, and so tonight I’m doing active tune work. This means trying out all previously learned tunes on both the new instruments, as well as seeing which of the next ones work better on which instrument.

Here are an assortment of things I have thus learned.

One, there is a certain pure, clear tone that a properly played piccolo can make. I’m NOT good enough to do it consistently, but I can get there. It requires not only a good embouchure, but also that you make sure and drink enough water, which is a problem in our fairly dry, cold house! I’m learning from Chirp, though, that if I play Chirp correctly, I can in fact approach a piccolo-like tone on it. Which is pretty impressive given that Chirp is made of applewood.

Two, I like the Lisdoonvarna/Swallow Tail Jig/Morrison’s set better on Chirp than I do on the new big flute. But I like Blarney Pilgrim better on the big flute, and will probably also like Da Slockit Light and Si Bheag Si Mhor better on that one as well.

Three, I am more nimble on Chirp, unsurprisingly, since Chirp is piccolo-sized. Even though the big flute is intended for “small hands”, it’s still a bigger instrument than I’ve been used to playing for a while, and it’ll take me a bit to work back up into it. I cannot yet achieve that purity of tone I was talking about above on the big flute, not yet, not while I’m trying to also play quickly.

Four, I’m playing with Apples in Winter and Cliffs of Moher tonight, and am learning from both of these tunes that I’m trying to punch their primary beats too hard. They both want to flow better than I’m letting them do. I need to work on that. I can pick out both tunes fairly easily on the sheet music, but that’s not the same thing. Reading off the sheet music is for purposes of just learning the tunes. Finding their music, i.e., making them actually sound good, is another question entirely. I’m still working on a lot of that with all of these tunes I’m trying to learn.

Fifth, I’m also playing with Jig of Slurs, in no small part due to my interest in the “Fortierville” set on La Volée d’Castors’ so very awesome live album–and while I’m starting to get Jig of Slurs down at least as a tune, again, it’s going to be a bit before I can whip through this thing as music. Especially if I want to play along with the La Volée recording. Which I DO. Relatedly, I have also observed that at least based on comparison to that recording, I’ve been playing Chirp kind of flat.

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The naming of instruments is a Serious Matter

December 1, 2011 in Music | Permalink

My new applewood fife and mopane flute have now been officially broken in at session, to the satisfaction of all parties involved. Those who attended session along with userinfosolarbird and me last night (which would be userinfosutures1, Matt, and Marilyn) expressed their approval in particular over the voice on the flute, which was very nice indeed in the pub. :D

I learned pretty quickly though that I’m not quite up to speed with my known tunes on these instruments yet. This is in no small part due to the fingerings on keyless flutes. The fife and flute both are in D, which means that the good part is, the fingerings are therefore very close to my piccolo. All fingers down means D on these instruments and on Shine alike, for example.

The bad part is, however, that the fingerings are not exactly like the fingerings on the piccolo! Shine being a concert C instrument (kicked up an octave) of course means that it’s oriented around the C scale, NOT around the D scale. So one finger down on Shine means C, not C#. I therefore will have to get the cross-fingerings for accidentals into my muscle memory on the fife and the flute in order to make these tunes work properly. Relatedly, I’ve also discovered that “Da Slockit Light” requires a G# and THAT in particular is going to be amusing to finger on these instruments.

Likewise I have learned that while the new instruments are going to be in regular session rotation, this does NOT mean Shine gets to stay home. I discovered VERY fast that if I’m trying to follow the others by finding sheet music for tunes in TunePal, I will be much, much more able to play on Shine than on either of the new guys. This is very clearly because when I see sheet music, my visual association with those notes is still solidly attached to the fingerings on keyed flutes. So next time, Shine comes to session along with the new ones.

On a much easier note though I have also discovered that the “Road to Lisdoonvarna / Swallow Tail Jig / Morrison’s” set we’ve been doing is surprisingly easier to play on the fife than it is on the piccolo. No half-holing is required for any of these tunes, and I seem to actually have an easier time playing Chirp, the fife, than I do Shine! The required embouchure is not as intense.

Which of course leads me to report that the fife is well and officially Chirp, now. The jury is still out on what to call the mopane flute, though. Ellen has opined (and I am inclined to agree) that this instrument should be named something Irish, since I am after all intending to use it primarily for Irish music, even if it’s made out of African mopane! She has proposed ‘Selkie’, which I must consider with due consideration–since this flute’s got a deep, rich voice and a deep golden brown color, both of which I could see being evocative of a selkie. I need to commune with the flute some more though and see if it agrees with me on this important matter.

Dara and I were discussing instrument names last night, too, and I shot down naming the flute either Herp OR Derp, pointing out that if any instruments in the world would be named those, they would clearly be kazoos. Dara now wants kazoos for the express purpose of naming them Herp and Derp.

And for that matter, I further opined that an accordion is too complex an instrument to be named Herp or Derp. To which Dara immediately replied that an accordion is NOT too complex to be named PAMCAKES!

I think her squeezebox has a name now.

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La Bottine Souriante album review!

November 22, 2011 in Music | 2 comments

I’ve been anticipating the new album by La Bottine Souriante for weeks now, and WOO! It’s finally out! The album’s called Appellation D’Origine Contrôlée, and I yoinked that thing right down from iTunes as soon as I saw it go up.

For my first exposure to the band’s current lineup, it performed splendidly. I had an undeniable initial “buh?” reaction to several of the tracks–because I have of course imprinted on a lot of the earlier La Bottine albums as my example of what they should sound like, and that’s not entirely fair to the newer members. Yes, vintage La Bottine is a POWERHOUSE OF AWESOME, and those are mighty large (smiling, aheh) boots to fill. I’m now quite prepared to state that the newer members are also awesome, but you have to go in with an open mind and open ear. Since there are so many new people in the lineup, the overall flavor and chemistry of the band is not the same, and so it’s necessary to judge the current lineup on their own merits and less on how much they sound like all the people that came before them (though I’m not discounting that, either).

On the whole I do quite like this album. After the first listen, I was a bit dubious. But after two more, I found it growing on me considerably. Granted, I was predisposed to like it anyway just because Èric Beaudry sings many of the songs–but on the other hand, his presence in the vocals was actually also kind of confusing to my ear! I’ve gotten used to hearing him as part of De Temps Antan as well as on his album with his brother Simon, so hearing him in this context is something I’m not quite used to yet.

There are two other gentlemen singing lead on the album as well, for whom I do not yet have names, and both of them did a fine job. The presence of so many backup singers makes for nice round vocals on many of the tracks.

Instrumentally, overall, the horns are sometimes more subdued than I might like–but again, a good chunk of that is coming out of my exposure to vintage La Bottine. When I cut back on that reaction and judge the blend of the horns with the rest of the instruments they’re playing with, I feel much better about them.

And now, track by track reactions!

Cette Bouteille-Là – I really like this one, which was the first of the free tracks the band was offering for download just before the album came out. This has an excellent blend of all the instruments and voices, and some jaunty energy to it. This is a great track for showing how the current membership of the band are inheriting from the older members.

Mon Père – Ah and here we have Èric Beaudry’s first lead song on the album! This has strong vocals in general, not only M. Beaudry’s, but also all the backup vocals. Some great deep vocals in the background, and all of the voices are set off nicely against the percussion. I particularly groove on M. Beaudry hitting his high notes in the background on the very last few bars of the song.

Reel à Roland – This is an instrumental, and starts off sounding fairly standard until the horns start coming in on the second iteration of the A part. Once the horns and piano build up, you start thinking, okay yeah, this is La Bottine Souriante.

Le Gourmand – Back to M. Beaudry on the lead vocals, which is always a good thing, though this is one of the songs on the album that kept making me think “wait wait this isn’t a De Temps Antan song”? Mais non, because there are horns here, and a lot more backup vocals! Also, M. Beaudry is rather more expressive on his vocals here than I’ve heard him be with De Temps Antan so far, possibly because he’s doing more lead singing here.

Chus Chatouilleux – Good strong punch from the horns to start this one up. I don’t know who’s singing here since I don’t know all of the current lineup of the band yet, but the singing’s good. It’s a bit weird for me though since whoever’s doing this singing has an accent similar to the lead singer over in Mes Aieux, so I’m once again having to remind myself that this is in fact a La Bottine Souriante album. When in doubt, listen for the horns.

André Alain en sol majeur – Another instrumental. It sounds like there’s a keyboard in here, which is another thing I’m not used to yet with the current La Bottine lineup. There’s a bridge in the middle with a keyboard solo, which gives this piece an almost jazzy feel. I find myself wishing that the horns were doing more than just backing up the keyboard, though; I really want to hear some trumpet love on the melody line.

Au Rang D’aimer – Back to Èric! A more plaintive ditty, this one, but nice full vocals.

Intsusadi – This is a good one! I don’t know what’s doing the main percussive line here–a steel drum? It’s a new sound for me in my La Bottine experience, regardless, and it makes this one the most interesting instrumental on the album for me.

Reel Calgary – While the previous was perhaps the most interesting instrumental, this one is nonetheless very appealing to me. Nice fiddle and footwork. As with track 3, the horns are pretty subdued–more than I might perhaps like. But on the other hand, they’re coming in at a good balance with the rest of the instruments and the overall somewhat wistful flavor of the piece.

On Va Barrer Les Portes – The other La Bottine singer I don’t know yet, but this is the same gent who sings lead on track 1. This song’s primarily vocal call-and-response, with just piano and footwork on the verses, until the horns and fiddle come in on a nice jaunty bridge. That bridge? That’s what I listen to La Bottine Souriante FOR.

Pèle-Mèle – One more Èric song! Good big fat bridge from the horns and keyboard.

Le Baillard – The album’s final track is one more instrumental, and a good long, strong one as well, layering in all the various instruments and letting them build power at a good pace. By the time you’re three minutes into the track, oh yeah, there’s excellent muscle to the horns here. And about halfway through, an excellent stomping bit! This one reassures me that while I may miss the powerhouse of awesome that was vintage La Bottine, modern La Bottine can bring it too.

Long story short, if you’re into Quebecois music or think you might want to be, yes, you should buy this album. I was delighted to see it go live on iTunes AND on the Amazon MP3 downloads store for purchase, which means it’s readily available to US customers. Their record label also has it available for purchase right over here!

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Meet my new flutes!

November 20, 2011 in Music | 2 comments

Dara and I went out on a quest today: to see about getting me my first proper Irish flute!

This was actually a two-stop operation, as it turned out. Our first stop was to visit a guy named Tom in Greenlake who had some flutes for sale, to check them out and see whether they would be appropriate for me. The flutes he’s selling are Skip Healy flutes, and while they sounded lovely, it turned out that the hole placement on them was difficult for my fingers. Dara and I did have a lovely conversation about flutes and about music in general with Tom, though, and he was approving of me wanting to try different flutes before I committed to one.

Also, he had a lovely friendly black cat named Midnight, who after giving me the obligatory kitty inspection, parked right in my lap right before I was trying to take my leave. Apparently my lap? CAT MAGNET. And if anybody in the Seattle environs is in the market for a Skip Healy flute, I’ll be happy to point you in Tom’s direction.

After that, though, we went to plan B, which of course meant going to Dusty Strings. My original intent was to simply walk in and try a few flutes, just to see if any of them liked me; I wasn’t really actively expecting to find one I really liked. But then we got there and I announced what I was looking for to the nice older gentleman at the counter, and he showed me a few of the Casey Burns Folk Flutes. These were all well within my budget, and it turned out that the one made out of Mopane had a really strong voice on him. I also tried one in Boxwood, but wasn’t nearly as impressed with the sound quality of that one. Neither was Dara–and since I had her along for a second opinion, the choice was clear!

Since Dara and I can’t get out of Dusty Strings without the obligatory WOO KIDS IN CANDY MUSIC STORE run through everything, Dara played with the bouzoukis while I went and got a copy of the Mel Bay Essential Guide to Irish Flute and Tin Whistle, which I’ve been hearing is awesome from multiple directions. I also grabbed a CD by Capercaillie that was on my To Get list, as well as an assortment of various interesting picks (you can never have too many interesting picks), and last but not least, a cute little Renaissance Fife made by Ralph Sweet. The fife’s in applewood, which won out over a couple others for best clarity of tone. And even though this little guy’s really more of a toy, he’s a lot closer in size to my piccolo and therefore quite comfortable to my hands.

The big flute came with a nifty padded cloth case, but the fife didn’t come with anything, and so Dara very kindly agreed to whip together a small padded sleeve for me! She’s got a sewing machine and plenty of material, so it turned out to be very easy.

And now I give you PICS. The fife is shown next to the sleeve Dara made, as well as next to the big flute for scale. Both of these instruments are in D, and I’ve already started trying to work through the various tunes I’ve already practiced, just to figure out where all the fingerings are and to get familiar with their individual voices. Sooner or later, too, these guys will have NAMES.

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Thank you, Galant girls!

October 25, 2011 in Music | Permalink

I was going to do another French sentence post tonight about Fred and George and the lively discussion I’ve had on Facebook about better words to use for describing cats as ‘fuzzy’. But this just got trumped by my picking out an entire understandable sentence in a song I don’t even have written lyrics for!

The song is “Faites-moi un homme sans tête” by Galant Tu Perds Ton Temps. The Galant girls have no lyrics posted on their website, which gives me a Sad, so I have to just keep listening to them and hope I get lucky picking out a word or three here and there. Tonight, that actually happened! On the way home I heard, in this particular song, a phrase that sounded like “je ne vas pas marier”. Which means, “I will not marry!”

I already knew ‘je’, the ‘ne … pas’ construction, ‘va’ being part of the conjugation of aller, and I got ‘marier’ from various other songs in my collection. So WOW, I picked out an entire sentence in French with my very own ears. Go me!

I just doublechecked the song and discovered that the line is actually ‘je ne va pas me marier’; I hadn’t caught the ‘me’ just before ‘marier’ the first time through. Now, Francophones, sanity check me on this–if I’m understanding my shiny new verb book correctly, the presence of the “me” in there indicates that the verb being used here is “se marier”, not just “marier”, which is the difference between “getting married to someone” vs. “causing an act of marriage”. So that makes the sentence more “I will not get married.”

Am I reading that right?

Either way, HOLY CRAP I just understood an entire French sentence in a song! *does a little dance*

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Session tunes status check!

October 21, 2011 in Music | Permalink

As of this post, I appear to be able to pull “Si Bheag Si Mhor”, “Road to Lisdoonvarna”, “Swallow Tail Jig”, “Morrison’s Jig”, and “Banish Misfortune” out of my brain and into my fingers, at least on the piccolo, without resorting to sheet music. I can’t do them (well, the latter four anyway, as Si Bheag is played slowly) at speed, and I can’t do them reliably–but they’re in the fingers now. Practice will make them stronger.

“Blarney Pilgrim” is on the way. I’ve got the A part in my fingers, though I don’t have the B and C bits down yet.

I think my next direct targets are going to be “Apples in Winter” and “Cliffs of Moher”, as the latter is in Matt’s handy tunes PDF and the former, pulled off of TunePal, is frequently paired with session. Meanwhile, in terms of tunes I TOTALLY want to learn just because of all the Quebec music I’ve been listening to, “Jig of Slurs”, “Irish Washerwoman”, and “Atholl Highlander” are now all on my radar because La Volée does such an awesome set of them on their live album. And, I have discovered to my glee that several tunes of Quebecois derivation DO appear to be in the TunePal database–all I had to do was search for “le reel” and “reel du”, and I got several hits of tunes that are all over my La Bottine albums.

My advanced homework remains parsing the nameless tune of M. Demers’ in “Lanlaire”, though! :D And other advanced homework will be starting to try to think about not only what tunes I like the sounds of, but also which ones might go together amusingly in combination. One of our experienced session players is strongly in favor of not chaining too much E minor together, which makes me want to think about what transitions of keys are good. There’s also the question of figuring out if a jig-jig-reel combination would work. A lot of instrumental tracks in my collection do that and it would serve me well to emulate their example.

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Quebecois band recommendations: La Bottine Souriante!

October 20, 2011 in Music | Permalink

Last but OH MY definitely not least in the slightest, we come to La Bottine Souriante!

Of all the groups I’ve been getting into, La Bottine is the oldest, and as near as I can tell they are pretty much the modern Quebecois trad version of the Chieftains. They’ve been around since the late 70′s, and became famous for taking the folk melodies and slapping a lively horn section on top of them. That, combined with the showmanship of lead singer Yves Lambert, made La Bottine a phenomenal live band during their earlier heyday. As I’ve posted before, I had the fortune of seeing them perform at the same Celtic concert where I first saw Great Big Sea, and I’m here to tell you–they WERE awesome. Monsieur Lambert had an amazing rich, round voice that hit my ears like 900-calorie cheesecake, and their horn section was laying down a wall of sound that steamrollered the audience.

So yeah, when it comes to modern Quebecois trad, La Bottine are the giants on whose shoulders everyone else after them are standing. If you want to get into this music at all, you cannot do wrong at all if you start with La Bottine. Even their name, “The Smiling Boots”, sums up why I love this music so much–not only because of the podorythmie, but because of the lively, upbeat energy. Well, that, and the aforementioned wall of sound from the horns, which do yea and verily ROCK.

Be aware that since La Bottine has been around for so long, they have gone through a huge number of membership changes over the years. This will therefore impact what level of awesome you get from one of their albums, depending on where in the discography you’re looking. I have only five of their many albums myself, and all of them are in the earlier stretch of La Bottine’s long range of activity: Chic & Swell, En Spectacle, Jusqu’aux P’tites Heures, Les Épousailles, and Rock & Reel (which has the distinction of being the only La Bottine album released in the States). Of these albums, I would most recommend either Rock & Reel or En Spectacle, which is a live album–either of these will give you an excellent introduction to the band’s canonical sound.

A big difficulty here though is that La Bottine’s albums are hard to find. Since Rock & Reel is the only one that was ever released in the States, and since a lot of the places that historically have sold music have been losing out to online distribution sources, even that one will be hard to find outside Canada. And very few La Bottine tracks, sadly, are available electronically! The US iTunes store, for example, has only a small number of La Bottine tracks, and all of them are single tracks on compilation albums. None of them are on the band’s own works.

The one electronic recommendation I can make is that La Bottine appears on the Chieftains collaboration Fire in the Kitchen. Great Big Sea fans will know this album well, since it’s got a GBS track on it, a take of “Lukey”. However, the La Bottine track on it, “Le Lys Vert” is very strong. This album IS on iTunes, and you should get it if you can–not only because of GBS and La Bottine being on it, but also because it’s a great overview of Canadian folk.

If though you want to find their albums, Amazon.com has them all (I think all, anyway) here. Amazon.ca represents over here. Archambault.ca, here (and they DO have La Bottine available as MP3 downloads, but again–only for Canadian customers).

YouTube-wise, there are a LOT of La Bottine vids of various quality, and most of them appear to be either older songs with static images, or else live performances involving the current-day members. Of these:

This one is the studio version of “Le ziguezon zinzon”, which goes clear back to the early album Chic & Swell, which is early enough that André Marchand–now over in the Charbonniers–is still in the band! And I think this may in fact be M. Marchand singing lead on this track; I’m not quite sure.

From Rock & Reel, I give you YoYo Verret, which is arguably one of the very first La Bottine ditties I ever fell in love with. The vid is static images only, and includes several of the modern lineup of members–so keep in mind that this is actually an older La Bottine song. I’m pretty sure that Michel Bordeleau, the other former La Bottine member now in the Charbonniers, has the lead here. And listen for the shiver-inducing deep harmony at the very end of the vocal section!

Off of En spectacle, here is “La Grand’ Côte”, one of the best tracks in the performance. There’s a stunning footwork solo towards the end–where the feet are flying fast enough that it sounds like machine-gun fire!

By contrast, if you search for “la bottine souriante 2011″ on YouTube, you should be able to find several videos of the current lineup of the group. This one unfortunately has clipping issues on the sound, but you CAN see Éric Beaudry over on the side making with the footwork with a guitar in his lap, and the guys with the horns kick in fairly quickly. Of note as well is the dancer on the stage, Sandy Silva, whose primary function in the group does in fact appear to be dancing. This one is notable because I recognize what they’re playing–it’s “Landslide Village Medley”, a.k.a. “Medley des Éboulements” from Rock & Reel! And, this one is only a partial, but again there’s M. Beaudry there on the side, and Sandy Silva dancing all over the stage.

La Bottine remains an active band, although that’s a bit hard to glean from their website–the YouTube search is a much better indicator. AND! AND! I am seeing rumblings on their Facebook page that they do have a new album on the way. So I’d recommend keeping an eye on their site, and if you are Facebook-inclined, they have a group right over here as well as an actual fan page!

It’s greatly comforting to see that the band’s current lineup is continuing its long and proud tradition, and here’s hoping that the new album will enjoy some electronic release!

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Quebecois band recommendations: Galant, Tu Perds Ton Temps!

October 20, 2011 in Music | Permalink

It gives me ridiculous amounts of glee that a (mostly) female group has dived into the male-dominated Quebecois trad genre, and this is exactly what you get with Galant, Tu Perds Ton Temps! I tend to listen to male groups in general just because I’m a sucker for the sound of several guys singing in full round harmony, a thing of mine that goes clear back to Elvis and the Jordannaires–but if you give me a bunch of women doing the same thing, oh my yes, I’m there.

The Galant group is technically not 100% female–they do have one male member of the group, Jean-Francois Berthiaume, who does their footwork and other general percussion. However, he doesn’t sing–so all the vocals are in fact female. And yeah, the Galant girls meet and match their male colleagues in this genre with some kickass vigorous harmonies! I haven’t identified which girl is which yet in terms of ranges sung, but whoever’s got the lower ranges in particular is delivering some great contralto/tenor lines, and whoever’s got the highest soprano is notable as well.

They’ve got only two albums available to date, Fais-toi pas d’illusions and the self-titled Galant, tu perds ton temps, which is actually the newer of the two albums. To further confuse matters, the band gets its name from a song of the same name, and that song appears on the earlier album! “Galant, tu perds ton temps” translates roughly to “Suitor/lover, you waste your time”, which is another thing that makes me giggle and giggle. Especially given that my boys over in La Volée d’Castors have also covered this song.

So which album should you get? That’s a bit of a hard call. I’ve got a LOT of tracks off the newer one on my Favorites list, and that one does have the selling point of being a double CD so you get a lot of music for the money. On the other hand, the three tracks I’ve marked as favorites on the other album are in fact the ones I’ve recently played more often. So really, it becomes a question of which one you can find, and which one you feel like paying money for.

YouTube has a lot of videos of them up, though, so if you search for “galant tu perds ton temps”, you should be able to find them. Here’s one of them doing “Mary of the Wild Moor” in English, and the video quality is good, so you can get an excellent idea of their overall vocal style. And here’s a partial vid of them doing “Les promesses du galant”, which is one of my favorites off the newer album, and I’m desperate to find proper lyrics for it because I’m FAIRLY SURE they aren’t actually singing “Monsieur Pants” in there. XD This one is “Faites-moi un homme sans tête / Reel Bergerville”, which I like off the newer album as well!

They’ve got no links to buy on their site, so your only option (that I know of) is iTunes if you want their music electronically and you’re outside Canada. Archambault.ca has only the second, larger album available for download, and their downloads are only for Canadian customers. For physical CDs, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and Archambault.ca all have those, but as with my earlier rec posts, if you’re not actually in Canada, be on the lookout for large shipping charges and be prepared to double up your purchases to qualify for free shipping if necessary! Or, if you are so inclined, recruit a Canadian friend to buy albums for you and ship them to you!

Out of all the Quebec groups I’m following, in some ways I’m most delighted by this one because, well, girls. And I heartily encourage checking them out in particular, if nothing else to encourage them to put out more albums–and to encourage other female groups to jump in on this genre as well. Because I’ll totally buy them, if they are this awesome!

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Quebecois band recommendations: De Temps Antan!

October 20, 2011 in Music | Permalink

These guys are the newest of the (male) Quebec bands I’ve picked up, both in terms of how long they’ve been active as a trio and how long I’ve been aware of them. They are also proof of my newly learned truth that any Quebec band with a Beaudry in it will have my IMMEDIATE AND UNDIVIDED attention! Because once I realized that Éric Beaudry, the brother of the lovely Simon, is himself an awesome bouzouki player, I was all over pulling these guys’ albums down from iTunes.

Monsieur Beaudry is the main draw for me here, just because of my fondness for the bouzouki, and it’s great fun to hear one used as a primary rhythm instrument in a trio. But that said, the other two boys in the band, lead singer Pierre-Luc Dupuis and fiddler André Brunet, are not to be discounted either. M. Dupuis has a nice full, rich voice, and M. Brunet (who, I note, is the brother of Réjean over in Le Vent!) rocks him some fiddle.

Since there are only three members of the band, the instrumentation is accordingly sparser than the other groups I’ve been listening to, but this doesn’t mean there’s less vigor. In addition to M. Beaudry’s bouzouki, M. Dupuis apparently likes him some harmonica, and the combo of those with the fiddle works very well.

Like with this YouTube vid of their song “La turlutte du rotoculteur”, which is the first one of theirs that I seized on. The layering in of their vocals, then the footwork, and finally M. Beaudry going at it on the zouk, I said? SIGN ME UP.

De Temps Antan have only two albums available so far, À l’année and their newer one, Les habits de papier. Both are available on iTunes and Amazon MP3 downloads, and good news for those of you who are fond of buying from indie sites–the newer album is also available on CD Baby! Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and Archambault.ca all have the newer album in physical form, but between Amazon.com having it at import prices and the likelihood of big shipping charges if you’re not in Canada, I’d personally vote for CD Baby first out of these.

Or! De Temps’ own site sells both albums directly, so really, you should try them first. :D (And oooh, they have T-shirts. This may well be Relevant to My Interests!)

Since there are only two albums to choose from, if you want only one, go with Les habits des papiers. That’s the one with the aforementioned “La turlutte du rotoculteur” on it, which I’ve been playing a lot. I also like “Pétipétan” (good showcase of M. Dupuis’ voice) and “Grand Amuseur du Filles” (good showcase of M. Beaudry taking the lead vocals) from that album.

There’s good stuff on the other one too, though. On that album, “Chère Léonore”, “Intrinifor”, “Duvons, Mes Chers Amis Buvons”, and “Les Pissenlits Bricoleurs” are my repeat play tracks.

Last but not least, recent Googling let me discover that De Temps were actually in Seattle last year! To which I say AUGH, if I had ONLY KNOWN. However, this raises the hope that they might come back sometime soon. If they do, I am THERE.

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