Album review

Lynda Lemay

Un paradis quelque part

Paris 

11/03/2005 - 

At the age of 38, Lynda Lemay, the bubbly singer-songwriter from Quebec, returns to the French music scene with a new album. Lynda's eighth album may take some fans by surprise, the sixteen songs on Un Paradis quelque part exploring much darker subject matter than her previous work. The singer includes a touch of humour and optimism on several tracks, but Un Paradis quelque part strikes a predominantly melancholic note with its painful ballads of death, old age and suffering in love.

Lynda Lemay has been a star in her native Quebec since the early 90s and the charismatic singer-songwriter wasted no time in branching out across the Atlantic to win over French audiences. In 1996, Serge Lama introduced Lynda to French fans as his support act and, shortly after that, another leading French 'chanson' star, Charles Aznavour, succumbed to Lynda's musical charms, taking the French Canadian under his wing. A remarkable word-of-mouth buzz began to circulate around Lynda's live shows and these days, the quirky Quebecoise diva has carved out her own place on the French music scene, establishing herself as a talented singer-songwriter with meaningful, intelligent lyrics, a simple, poetic style and an impressive capacity for tackling a wide range of themes in her work.

Not afraid of the dark

Lynda has been renowned for the eclecticism of her songwriting to date, proving she is equally at home penning a painful ballad about battered children, recounting the trials and tribulations of a senile bachelor - or the problems of snoring! But while her new album, Un paradis quelque part, does not rule out levity and laughter entirely, it is the darker subject matter of life that provides the narrative thread of the album. Old age and death are recurrent themes on Un paradis quelque part. In the haunting tableau conjured up by the song On te ramasse, a daughter looks at the "rags and tatters" of her father, expressing the fear that one day she will find him "floating off on the final journey, grey as a cloud." On Le vieillard et la jeune écervelée, Lynda places herself on the side of youth, describing a disillusioned and physically repugnant old man "polluting the youth" of a peachy-skinned young beauty.

Later on the album, Lynda tackles even more serious themes via heart-wrenching songs such as Paul Emile a des fleurs, a poignant plea in favour of euthanasia which evokes a daughter's distress in the face of her mother's terminal illness. ("Leave her her veins, at least/ She's not your mother!") After describing the physical degradations of old age in the most realistic detail, Lynda ups the tragic stakes even further, evoking the death of a child on not one but two songs. Fans have been used to Lynda exploring the quirks of motherhood in comically upbeat songs such as La marmaille (Brats) and L’odeur du bébé (The Smell of Baby). But on her new album motherhood is plunged into the realm of tragedy. On Je t’ai pas entendu a grieving mother recalls how she "swelled her body to feed that little mouth," feeling sure "you were OK, you didn't want to leave." On Les canards, the painful confession of a mother wracked by guilt because she was unable to save her daughter from drowning, the bucolic scene of ducks and ducklings paddling on the lake marks a painful contrast with the bereft mother left on the shore.

Even when Lynda turns to the subject of love, Cupid's arrow is dipped in suffering as she bemoans the fate of unrequited dreamers, women waiting in vain for knights on white chargers and lovers with their "souls ripped to shreds." Qu’est-ce qu’on va devenir mon homme?, a ballad about a couple watching their passion flicker and die, is one of the most moving songs on the album, its poignant lyrics ("We'd imagined that maybe with time our hands would have worn into one another and yet... ") marking the sad fizzled-out end of the affair.

Lightening the tone

These dark ballads require some light at the end of the tunnel, however, and thankfully Ms. Lemay inserts a few comic interludes in the form of songs about her own personal phobias. Monsieur Marchand is a hilarious confession, recounted in that irresistible accent, where Lynda lays bare her lifelong aversion of dentists. Le mal de l’air evokes the world's worst plane journey, sitting next to a relentlessly chatty businessman. And J’ai trente-huit ans (I'm 38), the 'hidden track' at the end of the album, is full of gloriously self-derisive moments where Lynda reveals her fears about the idea of turning forty. It is not surprising then, that when Ms. Lemay finally fantasises about a "paradise somewhere" (on the title track of the album), she imagines a far-off island cut off from the day-to-day troubles of life, "a world protected from the world" where misfits like her can escape.

Musically speaking, in between romantic ballads and classic pop-rock numbers, Lynda Lemay manages to experiment with a number of new rhythms (while preserving the integrity of the songwriting tradition). Her duet with fellow Quebecois star Kevin Parent, Les torchons, is a stroke of genius. Est-ce que tu me prends au sérieux? and Je te trompe, the two songs composed by Erick Mongrain (and featuring accompaniment by the young acoustic guitarist himself) are also musical highlights. In short, Lynda's eighth album, co-produced by her long-time musical companions, pianist Louis Bernier and guitarist Sébastien Dufour, is a remarkable and unsettling work which could well strike a chord with French fans.

Lynda Lemay Un paradis quelque part (Wea) 2005

After a series of concerts at Le Casino de Paris (7 - 12 June 2005), Lynda Lemay kicks off an extensive French tour

Stéphanie  Secqueville

Translation : Julie  Street