Catherine Major and Jeff Moran have merged since they met. Seventeen years later, they still love each other, are parents of four, and own a guest house in the Eastern Townships where they’ve found refuge since COVID. This place is their open-air bunker.
All that remained was for them to merge musically, after their separate careers as songwriters and composers, apart from a few texts written jointly for other artists. They’ve done it! And the gamble has paid off handsomely.
Catherine Major is more pop, piano, neo-classical tendency, Jeff Moran is more rock, guitar. The couple decided to entrust the music to Catherine and the lyrics to Jeff. All interacting. The result is music by Major with more guitar than on her albums.
The big challenge was to find a way to harmonize their voices, Moran’s baritone with Major’s alto. Both wanted to avoid taking turns singing their verses. They wanted to merge their voices. Let’s face it: at first, it didn’t seem obvious to me. But most of the time, the two partners succeeded.
Apart from the inevitable drums, bass, guitar and piano, the musical fabric is largely woven by the omnipresence of a string sextet. At the start of the album, there’s a sense of redundancy. But from Béatrice onwards, the fifth song, the music and lyrics gain in complexity. And in intensity.
We move away from reflections on the not-always-easy happiness of couples and love and move on to more difficult subjects. Death, war, mourning… and the quest for Aboriginal Nunavut.
And it all culminates in the title song, where the whole family sings along. A luminous song of lucid hope. “We’re more alive than the day before,” sing the children. And of course, it ends with the coined phrase Bunker à ciel ouvert.
That’s it! We’ve been won over, and want to listen again to find out more.
