Le Vent du Nord, one of the top-ranked contemporary Quebecois folk groups, marked its 10th year as a band with its seventh studio release, the impeccable Tromper le Temps (“Fooling Time”). Officially released in spring 2012 in Canada, it hit U.S. shelves Nov. 3, just in time for the band’s tour of the Western states.
Le Vent du Nord (The North Wind) is Simon Beaudry on guitar and bouzouki, Nicolas Boulerice on hurdy-gurdy and keyboards, Rejean Brunet on bass, keyboards and Jew’s harp, and Olivier Demers on fiddle, mandolin, guitar and foot percussion – and all contribute vocals and write songs. The quartet is one of the best and most influential in a vibrant Quebec folk music scene, and this album shows why. They’ve mastered the nuances of this traditional music, and without stepping too far outside the formal boundaries, they make progressive music that speaks to the present through the songs, tales and lessons of the past.
Two songs demonstrate this in different ways. The opening track, “Lettre a Durham,” was written by Boulerice in response to the British government’s attempts to assimilate French Canadians in the wake of the Rebellion of 1837-39; and the 10th, “Le Diable et le Fermier” (the devil and the farmer), updates an old folk tale of a farmer who tricks the devil by applying it to the modern environmental battle over natural gas “fracking.” (The band made a great video of this song, along with two other groups, Le Charbonniers de l’Enfer and Galant:
“Lettre a Durham” is a driving reel with thick instrumentation that includes electric bass , acoustic guitar, piano, fiddle, hurdy-gurdy and foot percussion, behind traditional call-and-response vocals. It is bookended, though, by a lovely slow acoustic tune on piano, accordion, acoustic guitar and fiddle that is almost a waltz, except that every third bar has two beats instead of three. This is the kind of thing that folk music all over the world does, this playing with forms, both musical and lyrical, and fiddler Demers says it’s a specially strong tradition in Quebecois music.
“There is a special energy, this crookedness to our music,” Demers says. “Melodies and words guide the rhythms in Quebecois music. Like blues, you add a few more beats to make lyrics fit. You don’t realize that it’s crooked, that it swings, until you analyze it.”
“Le Diable” could be a fairly standard Quebecois song, with foot percussion and call-and-response vocals (and in fact it is in the video mentioned above) but the band deviates a bit by making it a march, with all of them contributing the stamping of feet in martial four-four time. Even if you don’t understand the lyrics, you know something different is going on.
That’s just two examples. The whole collection is like that. Some of the songs step outside the call-and-response reel form, such as the lovely ballad “Adieu Marie” and the haunting “Dans les Cachots,” as well as Brunet’s pretty instrumental lullaby “Souffle d’Ange” that closes the album.
“Le Dragon de Chimay” is a wild and uptempo song based on a Belgian tale about lovelorn princess whose beloved is turned into a dragon and imprisoned under the city of Chimay; Boulerice wrote this while they were forced to lay over in Europe by the Icelandic volcano eruption in 2010. And there are a few old lyrics that the band has put to new music, including “Toujours Amants” and “Le Vigneron.” And the band wrote a few too, such as “Le Winnebago,” a reel-air suite inspired by some of their time on the road; “Le Souhait,” a spritely love song; and “Manteu d’Hiver,” a reel composed for violinist Brittany Haas and named after a brewpub in Denmark.
I interpret “fooling time” as remaining joyful in the face of all the slings and arrows that life and time bring your way. Le Vent du Nord’s music is a grand example of that practice. This music on Tromper le Temps is wonderfully precise yet brimming with warmth, wit and joie de vivre.
(Borealis, 2012)
