 |
  |
Caracol's intimate 'chanson'
Ex-Dobacaracol goes solo
Quebec
17/09/2008 -
It's official, Montreal-based singer and musician Carole Facal is a new woman these days. After cutting off her dreadlocks and quitting Dobacaracol - the successful 'world fusion' outfit she formed with percussionist alter ego Doriane Fabreg - Caracol has now branched out on her own. Her debut solo album, L’Arbre aux parfums, is a masterpiece of intimate songwriting and raw emotion.
OK, so it's only a haircut, but we all know how symbolic a radical new 'coiffure' can be. And for someone like Carole Facal - a woman renowned for flinging her dreads around live on stage whilst beating time on a djembé drum - cutting her hair appears to have coincided with a complete change of musical direction.
On the cover of L’Arbre aux parfums - her debut solo album released in Quebec last week - Caracol appears with neater, shorter, bobbed hair, looking straight ahead rather than at the camera, as if she is concentrating on where to put her feet next. "I'm someone who likes to press on with things and put my best foot forward," she says with a smile, "And I know what I want. I've always been a great one for forging ahead, all guns blazing." Which is something of a paradox for a woman whose stage name is the Spanish word for "snail"!
In her Dobacaracol days, Caracol was a prolific performer, assuring 425 concerts across sixteen countries in just three years. Barely a year on from that adventure, Caracol is now back in the starting blocks, raring to get back out on the road again with a stack of new compositions. Her solo material, she insists, is markedly different from Dobacaracol's infectious 'world' beats and mainstream fusion sound. And audiences will definitely not be hearing any songs from the Dobacaracol repertoire the next time she goes out on tour. "What I really want to do now is start everything again from scratch," Caracol says, "The time has come to turn over a new leaf and put the Dobacaracol days behind me."
From world to 'chanson'
So, having left Dobacaracol's catchy Afro-latin-pop fusion behind, where exactly is Caracol headed these days? "The thing with Dobacaracol," she admits, "is that those 'world' influences never really came from me. My big passion in life is 'chanson.'" Not surprisingly, songwriting lies right at the heart of Caracol's debut album, L’Arbre aux parfums. Musically speaking, the album is an accomplished mix of acoustic guitars, modern-sounding pop beats and warm, earthy folk with a hint of jazz thrown into the arrangements. And there is even a vibrant tribute to Jamaican rocksteady on a track entitled Le Livre de la colère. Caracol's debut album also includes two songs in English: Cold Box and The Laws of Sadness. "I speak three languages," she explains, "French, Spanish - because my father's from Uruguay - and English. I spent a while living in western Canada, in Vermont, back in the days when I was involved in competitive snowboarding. So singing in English comes quite naturally to me!"
Three languages? Competitive snowboarding? One wonders whether Carole Facal has any other surprises up her sleeve! But then she does seem to be a woman who thrives on the art of juggling the unexpected. Imagine the shock when, in the winter of 2007, Dobacaracol confirmed rumours that they - one of the biggest 'success stories' on Quebec's Francophone music scene in recent years - were putting an end to their career after just two albums. What's more, Dobacaracol's last album, Soley (distributed on Wagram) had sold extremely well and turned Carole and Doriane into international globe-trotters. Dobacaracol were a group going places in more senses than one!
"My solo project did seem to take everyone by surprise," Caracol admits. And one can easily imagine the consternation of the directors of the Indica label who had envisaged further international expansion plans for the group. "For me, being part of Dobacaracol was always a very positive experience," Caracol says, "but in many ways working with the group was pretty extreme at times, too. It certainly made me grow up a bit and think an awful lot and I got the chance to live in close quarters with a group of truly exceptional musicians. I'd never experienced anything quite as intense as that before in my life."
Close encounter with a ukulele
When Doriane and Carole decided to call a halt to Dobacaracol, they both knew they wanted very different things. While Doriane felt the time had come to take a break from the music world, Carole was eager to get back out on the road and tour. She admits that, with this in mind, she had already started writing new material during Dobacaracol's last tour, after a fateful encounter with a ukulele.
"The ukulele was a real trigger for me," Caracol says, "I spotted one sitting there in this shop window in Austria one day and it felt as if it were just calling out to me to buy it! It proved to be the perfect instrument on tour. It's so small and neat with this soft little sound that doesn't get on anyone's nerves. Even the musicians we toured with ended up falling in love with it!" By the end of Dobacaracol's last tour, Caracol had completed a handful of new compositions and she wrote the other songs on her album in the spring. Things moved fairly quickly after that and L’Arbre aux parfums was recorded and mixed by the end of July.
Despite this sense of urgency - and the hard-hitting themes Caracol tackles on some of the tracks - L’Arbre aux parfums appears to be infused with a general sense of serenity. This does not mean that Carole Facal is planning on relaxing any time soon, however. "I was never looking to take a year off!" she laughs. This appears to be an understatement. Ten concert dates have already been scheduled across Quebec and L’Arbre aux parfums is set to come out in France in the near future. It looks as if the Caracol show has only just begun!
Philippe Renaud
Translation : Julie Street
17/09/2008 -
