Folk music in Quebec is difficult. It’s an institution to which many artists have contributed, building a body of work with vast, tangled branches and currents. Many have left their mark, but also many commonplaces and tics. Remember: there can only be one Avec pas d’casque, one Safia Nolin.
It’s in this frame of mind that we begin listening to the debut album from Alma-born, Quebec City-based artist Sandra Contour: wondering whether the proposition will be a copy of a copy of a copy (perhaps also a little due to the fact that the role of critic is thankless and makes one pessimistic and in bad faith). Oh well! Skeptics will be confounded. These nine delicate songs, embroidered around the themes of isolation, the passage of time, separation and the inevitable fragility of everything, make up an album that is both sunny and nostalgic. The heritage of folk sale can be felt in the poetry, the use of inventive instrumentation (for example, the Eastern European flavor on “Rêver c’est pour les autres,” the double bass on “Onégile,” “Où est passé mon contour”), the diction and the themes.
However, Sandra Contour doesn’t try to be cooler or braver than the others, as folk sale sometimes did. Nor does she try to overplay self-pity. The outlines (hehe) are shaping an interesting career path for the artist, provided she takes us elsewhere in her mastery of the line between fragility and light.
