Arielle Soucy – Il n’y a rien que je ne suis pas

The emerging Montreal singer-songwriter opens the doors to a slightly fantastical folk sanctuary, where reality is paradoxical.

Il n’y a rien que je ne suis pas is Arielle Soucy’s new release, a bilingual album I was lucky enough to hear at Le Ministère last month. The artist’s natural, light-hearted performance in September was enough to make me look forward to October 20. On the album, there’s the serious and the wonderful, the friendly and the loving.

What’s immediately apparent is Arielle Soucy’s talent for unearthing compositions that sound new to the ear. On “Promenade,” melodies rise and fall in a staircase. Elsewhere, word cadences don’t quite fit into their rhythmic box. There are also moving multi-part harmonies built by looping. In the song “Light Grief,” these three elements overlap to create a dizzying, magical effect.

The lyrics are rooted in reality, with its multiple forms and contradictions. “Je contiens des multitudes”, she sings on “L’amour des peupliers.” And the album is entitled Il n’y a rien que je ne suis pas. Quite a scope. The album shows Arielle Soucy as having already made the effort to accept the paradoxes within herself and to notice what is perhaps best hidden, i.e. the normal.

The tiles on the floor, the flowers on the path, the little cat at her feet, the sticky sheets, the glass of water in the other’s hand… No image is too banal for the woman whose writing has the effect of a prism on the monotonous. And we thank her for this diligence in the everyday, since all these things seem instantly infused with a new weight.

I conclude that this artist is deliberately colouring outside the lines and that this is what makes her work so beautiful. It’s no simple task to give her songs a spontaneous feel, and I think she does it particularly well. The result is magnetic. The autumn wind is good for keb folk!