I was not disappointed. There was no moment of that movie that was not a GLORIOUS SYMPHONY OF AWESOMENESS. <3

This is going to be less 'review' and more 'fangirl squealing'! Look behind the fold for overall reactions!

Man, I didn’t expect to click hard onto Hawkeye nearly as much as I did. But damn, I LIKED him! Those of you from my Two Moons days will of course know my particular partiality to handsome, gruff archers who can shoot things without even looking at them, so given that, it’s no great surprise that I had quite a few moments of “goddamn that boy is channelling Strongbow”.

Plus, I loved his interplay with Black Widow. Part of me kept flashing to Brock Sampson and Molotov Cocktease from the Venture Brothers, I gotta admit–but on the other hand, those two were quite hot together. I giggled quite a bit at the line he gives her about how she remembers Budapest quite differently than he does.

And OMG how awesome was Black Widow. I loved her taking down her bad guys while tied to a chair. I loved her being the one who pulls Hawkeye back to the home team. I loved her being the one who pries information out of Loki, her being the one to clue in during the battle that taking down the tesseract might not be about guns, and how she got the Captain to fling her up onto that alien hovercraft so she could make her way up top. Black Widow rocked.

Thor! Mmmm, THOR. I was vaguely disappointed that a bigger deal wasn’t made out of how he actually got back to Earth again, especially given that I’d just rewatched his movie earlier in the week to get into a proper mindset, and I was also vaguely disappointed that Jane/Natalie Portman was not involved in his return–but at least they did give her a nod and let the audience know her status, and that Thor clearly asked after her. One hopes he’ll get back to her soon enough, possibly in his standalone sequel. But godDAMN, that boy is still pretty and looks awfully spectacular flinging Mjollnir around.

Captain America: still adorably handsome-and-dashing, straight-laced good. Say what you will about Boy Scout type heroes, but I LIKE Boy Scout type heroes! I LIKE that the Captain wants to do the right thing because he’s a fundamentally decent, courageous human being, and he was like that even before he became a supersoldier. And now he’s got that added wistful out-of-his-time air going on, and he was ADORABLE perking up about the flying monkeys reference, being all “HEY WAIT I got that one!” Also: Captain vs. Loki in Germany, roxx0r. The Captain telling Thor and Stark to SETTLE THE FUCK DOWN, also roxx0r. The Captain laying down the tactics for the cops in Manhattan though was my favorite moment with him! “Why should we take orders from you?” *Captain promptly dispatches several incoming aliens, and cops are all RIGHT THEN we’ll take orders from you* Hee hee hee hee.

Which of course brings me to Agent Coulson and AAAAAAAUGH. I suppose this would not have been a Joss Whedon film if somebody hadn’t died, but that’s another thing about Joss–the man makes his character deaths count. And MAN, I adored Coulson here. I liked him in all his previous appearances in the movies leading up to this, but I was deeply charmed by his fanboy gushing at the Captain, and I admired the hell out of him in his final confrontation with Loki. “Oh, that’s what that does…” Sniff. I took my hat off to him as the credits were rolling. Well done, Agent. Well done.

TONY! TONY STARK! Out of everybody in this entire cast, I can’t think of a better character for delivering pure Whedon snark gold. I loved that we got to see Pepper again, in all her Pepper glory. I loved Tony lighting up at Dr. Banner (“finally! Someone who speaks English!”) and inviting him over to play with his ten floors’ worth of shiny R&D toys. I loved the snark with the Captain about being the hero willing to take the sacrificial fall vs. always finding a way out, which of course sets up Tony’s whole throwing the nuke through the portal thing at the end. And I loved Tony lying there in the ruins of his suit, even then mumbling, “We won? Yay! Let’s just call in tomorrow…” (heart) (heart)

And speaking of Dr. Banner… O. M. G. I’d been seeing all over the net about how the Hulk pretty much walks off with this movie in several places, and yeah, he pretty much does. I adored this treatment of Banner and the Hulk, from Banner’s self-deprecating references to “the other guy”, to “Son, you’ve got a condition!”, to the Captain going “And Hulk? SMASH”, to that UNBELIEVABLY AMAZING grabbing hold of Loki before he even really warmed up on the pontificating and WHAM WHAM WHAM “PUNY GOD” ahahahahahaha! And that last punch he got in on Thor, and the roar at Tony to wake him up, and oh god, Joss Whedon made me love the Hulk. (heart) (heart) (heart) (heart)

LOKI! LOKI! LOKI! Loki was GREAT. Especially after having just rewatched Thor, I could definitely see the progression of the character from that movie to this one, since this Loki came across as quite a bit more fucked up than the Loki of the previous movie, which absolutely makes sense. Oh man, I loved him.

So, OH MY YES I will be seeing this again, and looking very, very forward to it. Well done, everybody in the cast! Well done, Joss! Well done INDEED!

Keeping a hawk’s eye on the tour Calendar on leventdunord.com just paid off. Looks like they ARE booked to play on the 28th at Memoire et Racines, the weekend that Dara and I will be in Quebec! Which means that the priority of getting to that festival for a day trip on the 28th just shot up to CRITICAL. :D Because yeah, I need me another Le Vent du Nord show STAT, and I especially want to see how they work a Francophone crowd. Also, it would be sporting of me to give them another fighting chance at my musical affections, given that Great Big Sea will be steamrollering over everything else once Dara and I reach St. John’s in August.

I also note with huge delight that Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer’s tour schedule ALSO shows July 28th (and the 29th, but the 28th is the pertinent date here). Which means that ideally I’ll get to see them too! They better not be scheduled opposite Le Vent, or else I shall be quite sad! Now all I need is to determine whether Galant Tu Perds Ton Temps is also booked on the 28th, to complete the trifecta of awesome–though really, if I get Le Vent and the Charbonniers in the same day, that’s quite a bit of awesome right there and that may be enough all by itself for me to explode from squee. :D

(Special side message to framlingem! You still in for this? Let me and Dara know! The Festival’s official full program goes online on June 14th and I’ll be getting Dara and me tickets, I want to make sure our plans can still align!)

• Roil, by Trent Jamieson. Fantasy/steampunk.
• Morlock Night and Infernal Devices, by K.W. Jeter. Steampunk.
• Hard Spell, by Justin Gustainis. Urban fantasy/detective noir.
• Blackbirds, by Chuck Wendig. Horror/urban fantasy.
• Empire State, by Adam Christopher. Urban fantasy/noir.
• Camera Obscura and The Great Game, by Lavie Tidhar. Steampunk.
• Sixty-One Nails, by Mike Shevdon. Urban fantasy.
• Moxyland, by Lauren Beukes. Urban fantasy.

And, picked up for free at work because our licensing department had a bunch of free copies:

• Unearthed, Submerged, and Vanished, all by Jordan Gray. These are the rest of the Mystery Case Files books put out by Harlequin–i.e., the books very loosely based upon our Mystery Case Files games at work! Kind of obliged to read these, I think. ;)

And, picked up because Kickstarters are awesome and I love this whole idea of throwing money directly at people to make art go (not that I have a vested interest in that or anything):

• No Dominion, by C.E. Murphy. Urban fantasy, a companion tale to the Walker Papers, from the point of view of cab driver Gary. Cannot wait to read this now that I’ve finished Raven Calls!

This’ll put me at 65 for the year!

No, you may NOT write a short story based on the Le Vent du Nord song “Le dragon de Chimay”. No matter how awesome a mental image you have in your head of a dragon breaking out of chains that hold him underground and surging up into the open air in desperate search of his lady love, and finally transforming back to human shape before her…

… damn, that’s an awesome image, innit? And it is NOT HELPING that I’m totally seeing this young woman and her “preux chevalier si tendre et amant”, as the cathedral collapses on him and he’s forced into dragon shape and she frantically tries to dig him out and no, no, no, dammit brain! You have a novel to finish and a novella to finish and a whole other novella to write and plan for all these lovely Kickstarter people throwing money at you, so STAY ON TARGET!

You are, however, totally allowed to geek right out over the translation of the lyrics, and listen to the song as many times as you like.

Because yes, folks, I like this band so much I want to write them fanfic. Or in this case, songfic!

I have had THIS brought to my attention–most recently by Monsieur de Grosbois-Garand, that fine gentleman who gave me the nifty flute lesson. I’d already discovered it poking around various band schedules to see if anything fascinating might crop up that could line up with my and Dara’s trip. But now, after seeing a promo pic go up on Le Vent du Nord’s Facebook page and then poking around on the actual site for the festival, I see that not only Le Vent will be involved, but ALSO the Charbonniers and Galant Tu Perd Ton Temps.

This, mes amis d’Internet, is extremely goddamn relevant to my interests, is what this is. :D

But augh the site for the festival appears to be considerably north of Montreal, at least 40 minutes’ drive and as long as 2 hours by transit. Transit seems right out as an option.

HEY framlingem and scrunchions! Don’t suppose either of you would be up for playing native guide and helping solarbird and me get to this thing, probably on the 28th as a target date? ‘Cause if I have a shot at seeing ANY of these bands live while we’re in Montreal, I am ALL. OVER. THAT. :D This might be my only shot at all to see the Charbonniers or the Galant girls!

Videos behind the fold! The three new ones are from Le Vent du Nord’s recent CD launch party in Montreal–so all the between-song stage talk is in French, too fast for me to follow, but the videos are long and have two songs each, so they are quite worth your time. The two older ones are Genticorum, who I feature here now since those boys are putting in a powerful bid to become my Official Second Favorite Quebecois Band (though I reserve final judgement until De Temps Antan gets out here in August)!

Video #1 from the Le Vent launch show! This one has “La soireé du hockey”, and this performance is well worth it because you actually get the finish of the set, which fades out on the track on Tromper le Temps. It’s also got “Le cœur de ma mère”, of which I am very, very fond.

Video #2 from the Le Vent launch features “Le dragon de Chimay” and “Manteau d’hiver”, two of the most awesome tracks off the new album. Dragon transformation story FTW! And the instrumental is amazing; Olivier Demers makes the fiddle chime like crystal.

Video #3 from the Le Vent show: “Toujour amants” and “Lettre à Durham”!

And now, Genticorum!

First, some sweet hot piping a cappella goodness, with “Nagez rameurs”.

And second, an older video featuring guest fiddle from the aforementioned Olivier Demers! And take especial note of Alexandre de Grosbois-Garand on the flute. That guy? I’VE LEARNED TUNES FROM THAT GUY. He can PLAY. I’d say I want to play like him when I grow up, except screw that, I want to play like him NOW. :D

Picking up at roughly 2pm yesterday afternoon, workshop lessons hosted by Devon and Dejah Leger took place, with Genticorum’s fiddler Pascal Gemme leading a group in working on tunes. But since yours truly is not a fiddler, I got to corner Genticorum’s flute player, Alexandre de Grosbois-Garand, for a solo lesson! That was great. I’m coming to learn that flute players are pretty thin on the ground in Quebecois trad–apparently there’s Genticorum’s guy, and a woman in another group, and that’s about it at the moment. According to Alexandre’s bio, he’s leading a charge to establish a Quebec-style flute tradition, which for my money is awesome.

So I got to work with him for a couple of hours on two tunes, a jig and a reel, in the name of trying to exercise my ability to learn stuff by ear. I explained my musical background to him, i.e., six years in school band and being accustomed to learning stuff from sheet music, so I don’t have a mental link between hearing a tune being played and getting it quickly into my fingers. But I DID manage to more or less pick up the two tunes he played at me, as we broke them down into smaller pieces. And he had me record him playing them on my iPhone, so I could take them home and play more with them later. It was a bit of a challenge to hear him play given that there was a great big stomping herd of fiddle players in the other room, but we made it work! :D

Once the lessons were done, though, it was time to head over to the Phinney Neighborhood Center for Genticorum’s concert. Dejah gave me a lift over so I could meet Dara there, and then Dara and I inhaled some dinner and hung out for a little bit playing our instruments and bellowing Great Big Sea songs. +10 to Dara though about making cracks about me needing to stop thinking in French long enough to shift back to playing the B’ys. Hee. *^_^*;;

The show itself, crowd-wise, was a bit more sedate than I’d have liked–this was a sit-down type crowd for the most part, generally older than Dara and me, but things got lively in the second set once Genticorum got the participatory stuff going. And while they’re not as much of a powerhouse on stage as Le Vent (which would be difficult without a hurdy gurdy), make no mistake, these boys are nimble of style, deft of vocals, and quite, quite funny. Alexandre is an excellent flutist (and a good fiddler and bass player, for that matter); Pascal has a distinctive hand on his fiddle AND showed fun variety of podorythmie style; and Yann, their guitarist, kept things moving nicely with his rhythm support.

ETA: Forgot to add the two funniest bits of the concert:

• Yann teaching us the (all nonsense syllables) response line for one of the choruses, and all three guys expounding at length upon the power of that particular line of syllables in Quebec (“it comes with great responsibilities”, Yann informed us, and Alexandre added, “It’s also a great pickup line”). What really made me chortle, though, was Yann translating the line to “English” by singing the exact same syllables with an Americanized accent. *chortle*
• Alexandre switching off to the bass, which prompted the other guys to expound upon how he came from a long line of five-string, electric, fretless bass players. “His great-great-grandmother played fretless bass…” Dara promptly threw up her hand in an appropriate R0XX0R gesture and got the band to HA! in her general direction.

The real fun of the evening, though, was the kitchen party after the show! I’ve been to a couple of sessions with the local Quebecois music crowd now, but this was another level of wild and awesome up beyond those–so well-attended a party that we had frequently had two distinct groups of musicians ripping their way through tunes going at the same time. I didn’t do an actual head count, but I’m pretty sure we had every fiddle player in Seattle stuffed into that house! There was at least one mandolin (spotted in the hands of the aforementioned Pascale)! There were at least three guitars! There was several accordions and a keyboard! There was a bouzouki (in the hands of my very own Dara!)! And there were two flute players, Alexandre and me, i.e., the one who knew what he was doing, and the one hanging out on the edges of the whirlwind of music and trying desperately to pick up anything by ear AT ALL!

(Which I did a couple of times, which kind of surprised me! I’m suspecting this is support for the theory I espoused to Alexandre, i.e., that lack of connection between hearing a certain sequence of notes and being able to immediately pick them out on the flute. MAN, I want to do this some more. I’ll have to play with the recording we made and see if I can nail down those two tunes, and then see how frisky I feel about trying to learn Alexandre’s ornamentations. :D He even asked me after the show if I was coming to Fiddle Tunes, which is a big week-long musical workshop, since he and Pascale are apparently both doing tutoring there–and MAN, if I hadn’t already allocated most of my vacation for the year to the Great Atlantic Canadian Adventure, I’d be seriously, seriously eying this.)

Surprise fun was had by Dara and me as well when Yann the guitarist chatted with us a bit! Dara’s bouzouki caught his eye, so they musicgeeked about that a bit, which led of course to Dara getting to describe Crime and the Forces of Evil and ‘rage-driven acoustic elfmetal’. THAT actually wound up leading to jokes about Elvis vs. Elvish and THAT led to jokes about Elvish Elvis impersonators, and–you know where this is going, people–THAT naturally led to me having to mention Faerie Blood, because Elessir a’Natharion demands nothing less. So I told Yann I had a Kickstarter going and he asked me for the link, and I showed him the cover art in progress and enthused about just getting to see all these fiddlers even if I wasn’t a fiddler myself, because then I could learn how to describe fiddle playing better in my prose. :D

And here’s what else I wind up doing at these things when I hit the point of my brain being full and telling me SRY NO MORE TUNES FOR YOU RIGHT NOW PLZ–I start watching the stepdancers and trying to follow THAT. Because several women at the party jumped up to dance, and Yann was showing Dara and me and a couple other people how the steps worked, so I just had to try that too! It’s like podorythmie without a chair and holy crap that was fun.

Around 11:30 or so I reluctantly admitted to Dara that we should probably leave by midnight, just because I did have to work in the morning! I didn’t want to go, but y’know, work and stuff. Which was really almost the most amazing thing about it–actually wanting to stay at a party because what alien had taken over my brain, anyway? XD

We stayed long enough for a little show on a cranky, in honor of Genticorum, while a fiddler and a guitarist whose names I have sadly forgotten performed one of the waltzes the boys had recorded. Which was a lovely, lovely way to make our exit.

And now that I have experienced an actual Quebec-style kitchen party with actual Quebecois musicians, I gotta say: That. Was. AWESOME. All I gotta do now is experience a proper Newfoundland-style kitchen party, to compare. For SCIENCE! \0/

In conclusion: all of you should go buy Genticorum’s albums too, when you’re done buying Le Vent du Nord! :D Many, many thanks to those boys for their awesome show, to Alexandre for the superb lesson, to the Legers for hosting the lessons, to Valerie for arranging the concert, and to Julia for hosting the after-party!

• Glamour in Glass, by Mary Robinette Kowal. Fantasy, book 2 of her Shades of Milk and Honey series. Grabbed this one in hardback in no small part because of Kowal’s awesome, creative handling of the problem of the problem of what happened to the first sentence in the book.

And, picked up electronically from B&N:

Nights of the Round Table and Other Stories of Heroic Fantasy and February Thaw and Other Tales of Contemporary Fantasy, both by Tanya Huff. These are two short story collections, available electronically. Because, of course, Tanya Huff is awesome and I need every word she’s ever written!

51 for the year. And hopefully once I’m done with Kickstarter adventures, I can get in more progress on my sadly backlogged book reviews!

Vous savez déjà, mes amis d’Internet, que j’ai une grande admiration³ pour Le Vent du Nord, le premier groupe à contester Great Big Sea pour mes affections! Il n’est donc pas surprenant que j’aime ce nouvel album. J’aime son esprit. J’aime ses souliers⁴. J’aime son énergie, son harmonie, et les histoires qui m’attendent dans les paroles. J’aime cet album tellement je vais l’acheter à deux reprises, sur iTunes et sur CD! Et je vous exhorte tous à l’acheter aussi, parce qu’il est beau et impressionnant!

(Okay, that’s about as much French as I can coherently manage in one blog post.⁵ The Too Long; Didn’t Read Because I Don’t Understand French version: buy this album, because it is a thing of beauty and the boys of Le Vent du Nord are awesome. Tell them I sent you!)

Full review, including song-by-song reactions, behind the fold!

I need to get past the initial squee of ZOMG NEW ALBUM to issue a truly definitive verdict–but so far, this album comes across hard as a stronger, tighter work than either Dans les airs or La part du feu, the two previous albums with Le Vent’s current membership lineup. I’ve been reading some of the media reviews that the band’s been linking to, and in these, M. Boulerice is quoted as saying how their fans often tell them that their albums are good, but their shows are so much better. (AND, having now actually seen Le Vent du Nord perform, I can throw my vociferous agreement in on that.) Thus, they tried to capture some of their live performance energy in this album by all playing together in the studio.

And it works amazingly well! It makes me want to grab every instrument I own and start trying to play along, and it makes me want the physical copy of the album now now now maintenant⁶. Not only because this is the first Le Vent du Nord album I get to buy at its release, but also because I am desperate to see the lyrics so I can start learning what all the songs are about!⁷

Simon Beaudry gets three, count ‘em, three songs to sing lead on, and that lets him beautifully work his voice. To my delight, Réjean Brunet also gets a lead song–I’d already decided that boy needs to sing more! “Le dragon de Chimay” sounds every bit as tight as I remembered from seeing this one performed at the show. Nicolas Boulerice is in excellent voice, particularly on “Le diable et le fermier”, which I’d previously seen on YouTube as a joint effort between Le Vent, Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer, and Galant Tu Perds Ton Temp. And I begin to suspect that like unto Tony Stark, Olivier Demers must be powered by his very own personal arc reactor, the best explanation I can come up with for how he pulls off such vigorous fiddle playing and vigorous podorythmie at the same time⁸.

And now, let’s talk individual tracks!

Lettre à Durham: This one starts off deceptively slowly with the instrumental intro, then kicks into high gear as soon as Nico starts belting out the verses–at which point this album announces quite firmly that it is open for business. Good strong minor harmonies all over this song, the strong, sweet harmony that’s one of Le Vent du Nord’s trademarks, and Olivier’s fiddle keeps dropping neat shivery little strikes on the strings on the verses, too. I don’t have nearly enough French to follow these lyrics yet, but I’m really curious about what this song’s about. In the articles I’ve read, there are references to this one being tied in with the history of Quebec, so clearly I have some more reading up to do.

Le dragon de Chimay: Heard this one in Vancouver and it sounds every bit as awesome here as it did live! As mentioned, I am eager to get hold of the lyrics to this one so I can better learn the story–because as an author of fantasy novels, I am morally, ethically, and creatively obliged to be absolutely down with dragon transformation stories! Lovely fiddle and hurdy gurdy goodness here, too. I have just enough French at this point to catch tantalizing little bits, a few words I can recognize–but I don’t have enough words yet. OH, I need these words, just to see if they fit with the places my imagination goes when led by the song. The hurdy gurdy is definitely a great instrument to convey a feel of musical, draconic power, that’s for sure.

Toujours amants: Now we’re TALKING: Simon’s first lead song on the track, and here my fledgling French actually threw me the entire phrase “adieu, mon chere amant fidèle, apres de voir me le longtemps”. I don’t know if that’s right, mind you, but I’m rather tickled I got a fairly long string of possible coherent words right out of the gate with this one! As for the song itself, I also heard this one in Vancouver, where it was an excellent impetus for La Danse Verticale. The studio version is equally bouncy, with M. Beaudry grooving on the higher end of his range. Guitar and accordion and piano are the instruments of choice here, along of course with Olivier’s fiddle and feet, and it’s all delightful. This is my current favorite track on the album, and both the live version in Vancouver and this studio version provoke the same overall response from me, which is to say: Simon needs to stop destroying my knees.⁹

Le winnebago: This is one of the instrumentals the boys did in Vancouver, the one whose title I wasn’t sure about. Heavy on the fiddle and hurdy gurdy and mouth harp here, not too fast on the tempo at least on the first piece in the set; I think I hear some keyboards sneaking in here too as the second tune of the set kicks in. It’s a good tight set, though, with strong energy despite it not being quite as fast as the preceding tracks, and easily danceable¹⁰. The only weird note for me about this one was in fact the final note, since it ends on a bit of strange minor dissonance out of the hurdy gurdy, leaving me with a mental “quoi?”

Le souhait: Réjean’s lead song! This has a bit of a minor flavor to it, well suited to M. Brunet’s darker-timbred voice. As with some of the preceding tracks, I can comprehend a few tempting words here and there, not enough yet to decipher meaning, but enough that my brain’s trying to fill in the blanks anyway!¹¹ And it ends on a bit of a strange unresolved chord, too, so again with the “quoi?” One other thing I really do like about this one, though: on the bridge, there’s some high sweet harmony on the response lines, which is particularly enticing on the grounds that now that I’ve got all of Le Vent’s albums, I’ve been able to learn the character of Nicolas’ and Simon’s and Réjean’s voices–but not Olivier’s! It’s very, very easy to forget sometimes, since he does such an amazing job with the fiddle and the feet, that he’s also singing backup. And on the harmony bits in this song, I’m hearing two higher voices that are clearly not Nicolas, so one of them has got to be Olivier, and man, I want to hear him sing lead on something now too. Even if it’s just a single verse in a bridge or something! But we can’t distract him from writing instrumentals too much, which leads into…

Manteau d’hiver: … this! Oh, I like this one! This is another instrumental, and Google Translate informs me that its title translates to ‘winter coat’. I can totally hear it, as the delicate piano strikes, guitar strums, and brushes on the fiddle strings, almost crystalline in sound, do a gorgeous job evoking a brisk winter day. I can almost feel snowflakes on my cheeks, just listening to it. When the feet come in, that’s the snowfall starting–and maybe you’re out there frolicking around in it, and throwing snowballs! And as this set winds in to a close, it’s time to head in again. There’s a fireplace waiting, and something hot to drink, and you can settle down to get warm while you watch the snow keep falling outside. In short: beautiful!

Adieu Marie: Simon’s second song! This one’s practically country in its overall style, and definitely the most laid back on the album. It’s not an unfamiliar style to me, since it’s a strong callback to Le sort des amoureux, the album that Simon did with his brother Éric–but on the other hand, it’s almost a bit too strong a callback, since I keep expecting Éric to come in on harmony!¹²

Le cœur de ma mère: Oh YES, now we’re back to another song I heard in Vancouver, and this is absolutely another one whose lyrics I’m eager to get hold of. I know the overall story of the song now–the story of the young woman who loves an evil woman who demands that he kill his mother and bring her heart to her, to be fed to her dog!–but I need to map the story to the actual words! Musically, there’s not as much speed here as with “Le dragon de Chimay”, but there is strength, and a haunting melody line, and a long turlutte at the end. And I do love my turluttes so very, very much, and Le Vent doesn’t do them often, and so for that alone I’m obliged to love this song!¹³

Vigneron: Back to Simon, and this is always a good thing, especially when he’s all up and down his range. No idea yet what this one’s about, but musically it’s fast, it’s nimble, and minor-flavored, and it’s going to get more attention from me once I get hold of the lyrics. Very nice little outro, powered as it is by Olivier’s flying feet!

Le diable et le fermier: This is the aforementioned song that was a previous collaboration with Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer and Galant Tu Perds Ton Temps. I’m still not used to this version, and I’m not sure yet if I like this one as much as I do the other, collaborative version. Le Vent in unaccompanied a cappella glory is shiver-inducing, don’t get me wrong–but I’m not sure if the steady, stompy rhythm that’s providing the only percussion here quite works for me. It’s just straight, fast stomping as opposed to more complex podorythmie, and so it sounds like marching to my ear, a bit too fast for the lyrics; it’s distracting me a bit as I listen. We close out with a dark statement out of the hurdy gurdy, though, and that is awesome.

Dans les cachots: Nicolas is in splendid voice on this one, I’ve got to say. Again, no idea yet what this one is about, but the melody’s sad, M. Boulerice is dipping down into his lower range, and it’s overall making me think of sorrowful things found at the bottom of shot glasses in smoky bars. Or brooding staring out of windows, on gray winter days. That this song can be so evocative to me even when I don’t even know most of the language yet is, I think, a shining example of why Le Vent has charged its way into my musical affections.

La soirée du hockey: YAY! Another piece we heard in Vancouver, and an excellent set from M. Demers! My only problem with this recording of it is that it pulls a deeply frustrating fade-out–frustrating because of Olivier’s entire intro of this song during the concert, describing how the three-tune set is supposed to represent the three periods of a hockey game. But if the song fades out, that means we don’t get the end of the game! Augh! Frustrating on both a musical AND a metaphorical level! It doesn’t console me much either since in concert, this thing ended with delightful stadium-style fiddle riffs, and now the recording just doesn’t sound complete to me without them!¹⁴ That said? It tickles me deeply that Olivier wrote a set about hockey. Like you do, apparently, if you’re a fiddle player in Canada, Anglophone OR Francophone. :D¹⁵

Souffle d’ange: Last but not least, we get a final instrumental, this one slow and sweet and simple, enough that in my capacity of ‘somewhat rusty flute player who needs more practice’, I think I might actually be able to pick this one up! It will be the first one I try, and I look forward to doing so! As a way to end the album, though, it’s a bit wistful–but not sad at all.¹⁶

In closing: Tromper le Temps, je t’aime! This is the start of a beautiful musical friendship!

1. If you don’t speak French, fling the next paragraph through Google Translate. Which is, of course, how I built that paragraph to begin with.
2. If you do speak French, please, please tell me where I need to refine my grammar!
3. “Une grande admiration”: Anna!French for “I fangirl the hell out of these boys”.
4. Its stompy, STOMPY shoes. <3
5. Note: I didn’t say this would be GOOD French. XD
6. <FrenchGIR>J’ai besoin de cet CD! J’en ai besoin ou J’EXPLOSERAI! Cela m’arrive parfois!<FrenchGIR>
7. And, of course, learn to sing all the response lines properly to prepare for further concert outings! My fangirly duty: I know it!
8. Note to self: at my next Le Vent du Nord show, check and see whether M. Demers has a suspicious glow underneath his shirt.
9. And by ‘stop’, I mean, ‘Le Vent du Nord needs to come to Seattle RIGHT NOW and sing to me some more’. I just need to make sure I bring an extra supply of emergency knees, for dancing purposes!
10. Said the girl who has no idea how to dance, but who will for Le Vent du Nord dance anyway, as Vancouver proved!
11. The word “aujourd’hui” is not enough to build a coherent song, but I can by gods recognize it when I hear it now. It’d be nice if my brain gave me a few more nouns and verbs, though!
12. Not that I’ve listened to that album a lot or anything! Because um, yeah. Any album with a Beaudry? Immediate. Undivided. Attention. What can I say? :D
13. Turluttes need no translation! HEY UP A DEEDLE DUM DAY DA HEY UP A DEEDLE DUM DAY!
14. And I’m not even a hockey fan! But I AM a writer, and I want closure on the metaphor!
15. And this is a bit more genteel, I suppose, than Great Big Sea bellowing “AND NEVER TRUST A FELLA WITH A HELMET ON HIS HEAD”, but I daresay these songs could go head to head in a hockey-related musical face-off. :D And now I totally am envisioning Le Vent du Nord vs. Great Big Sea in a hockey match.
16. And I have to admit I get a bit of a giggle out of the title, just because both my family and my marketboys like to call me ‘Ang’, which is not unlike ‘ange’ in pronunciation, so now my French parser in my brain keeps wanting to call this one ‘Breath of Angela’, which, given that I’m a flute player, is clearly a SIGN!

Bought in print from Norwescon:

• Fuzzy Nation, by John Scalzi. SF. This is Scalzi’s reboot of H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy, finally out in mass market paperback, so I picked it up.
• The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity, by assorted authors, edited by Patricia Bray. Anthology, bought on the strength of Joshua Palmatier being in it, and on the title. Because that’s a hell of a title!
• The Singers of Nevya, by Louise Marley. This is an omnibus edition of the series of the same name, including Sing the Light, Sing the Warmth, and Receive the Gift. I had copies of these ages ago and wanted to read them again.
• Leaves of Flame, by Benjamin Tate. Which I’d already had in ebook form, but I bought it again in paperback on general principle!

Also gotten from Norwescon, but in the freebie bag rather than as a purchase:

• Touched by an Alien, by Gini Koch. I’d call this a paranormal romance, except it’s more like an SF romance, and instead of supernatural beings, we have aliens! It’s still definitely got mostly paranormal romance sensibility, though; partway through reading it as of this writing. I’d already gotten the ebook, so it amuses me to have a print copy too.

Speaking of ebooks, picked up from B&N today:

• Once Upon a Winter’s Eve, by Tessa Dare. Romance. This is actually book 1.5 in one of Tessa Dare’s series, and it’s a novella, snarfed off of bn.com for the low, low price of 87 cents plus tax. Grabbed it because I saw SB Sarah tweeting bits of Dare’s prose, thought she had a nice turn of phrase, and thought I’d give this novella a look. Plus, what with my current interest in French Canadian music, a guy speaking Breton–the language of the Celts that live in France–seemed like an excellent blend of two different swoonable tastes that taste great together.

48 for the year.