We Are Sunshine

Blaze Velluto draws on the pop music of his parents, if not his grandparents. Once again, there’s reason to be intrigued by those young aesthetes who are passionate about popular forms in vogue before their own time. The instrumentation, the arrangements, the choruses, in short, everything in We Are Sunshine has very little to do with the present tense: hints of Simon & Garfunkel, The Byrds, The Mamas & the Papas, Peter, Paul & Mary, John Fogerty (CCR), ’60s soundtracks, and traditional Chinese music… the forms are rigorously reread, as others might with Brahms, Bach, or Chopin. Let’s not exaggerate, Blaze Velluto’s artistic approach does not consist in stupidly plagiarizing the elders, but rather in tinkering with an inspired collage and throwing it to his contemporaries, who do not have the historical a priori mentioned here. The finesse of the arrangements and production will impress many, and the execution of this stylistic exercise is simply impeccable: Blaze Velluto provides guitar, keyboard, vocals, and psychedelic lyrics to perfection, Guillaume Chiasson plays bass (not to mention the recording and mixing), Jean-Étienne Collin-Marcoux and Tonio Morin-Vargas, percussion and vocals, and Little Miss Roy, Odrée Couture-Bédard, and Anna-Frances Meyer provide the backing vocals.