July 31, 2022
at Miels d’Anicet, Ferme-Neuve
Leif Vollebekk
New Ways is a new album by Montreal’s Leif Vollebekk, his hotly anticipated follow-up to the Polaris Prize finalist Twin Solitude. It’s the sound of desire in its unfolding—a time, two years ago, when things were changing fast and the songwriter didn’t want to forget. “Leonard Cohen once sang, ‘I hope you’re keeping some kind of record,’” Vollebekk says. “So I did.”
In the end, New Ways is a document of everything the musician felt, the way each instant arrived and moved through him. Whereas Twin Solitude was about self-reflection, New Ways is about engaging and changing, touching and being touched. It’s a physical record, with louder and tighter grooves, and the rawest lyrics the musician has ever recorded—tenderness and violence, sex and rebirth, Plato and Julie Delpy. What mattered most was the feel of each the groove, the distance between the kick and the snare. “If it didn’t feel right we’d do another take, or switch from piano to guitar, or change the drum sound,” Vollebekk says. 10 different tracks for 10 states of motion, each with its own pulse.
Opening act :
Myriam Gendron
Myriam Gendron was born in Ottawa in 1988 and she grew up between Gatineau (Quebec), Washington D.C. and Paris. She settled in Montreal at the age of sixteen, where she currently makes her living as a book dealer.
In 2014, she released Not So Deep as a Well, a nine-track album made from poems by Dorothy Parker that she set to music. The critically-acclaimed record, released by Feeding Tube Records and Mama Bird Recording Co., was picked for many best-of-the-year (and best-of-the-decade) lists. Richard Meltzer, one of the founders of modern rock criticism in the USA, wrote that Not So Deep as a Well, “is the hottest—and FINEST!—Impossible Love collection in, I dunno, 30 years.”
Seven years later, in 2021, Myriam Gendron released Ma délire — Songs of love, lost & found, a very modern exploration of North American folk tales and traditional melodies. The bilingual double album of 75 minutes, released on October 1st 2021 by Feeding Tube Records and Les Albums Claus, is very well received by local and international musical critique.
