FLY, by Sébastien Lacombe: between diving and taking off [VIDEO]

Sébastien Lacombe's fifth album, Fly , is a breakthrough album. Not just any: separation from the one who had shared his life for two decades.

Share September 25, 2020 1:18 pm Update at 11:28 pm Share FLY, by Sébastien Lacombe: between diving and taking off [VIDEO]

Steve Bergeron La Tribune Sébastien Lacombe's fifth album, Fly , is a breakthrough album. Not just any: separation from the one who had shared his life for two decades. The mother of her two boys. The woman with whom he notably made the crazy plan to settle with his family in Senegal for a year, in 2011. And many other adventures which, suddenly, took on the color of mourning.

“I saw the break-up of my family unit. So yes, it was a hard drive to write. I went hollow. There were difficult times and I still relive things when I get back to certain songs ”, he concedes when quoting disturbing titles ( When the Devil Rides with Me, Mr. Suicide Man ) of this engraving all in English. “But there is always a light,” he hastens to add. The album also talks about the reconstruction after the love crash. “

The opus ends in fact with tracks that evoke more acceptance ( I Am Who I Am ) and flight ( Fly, Rise ) after the plunge.

“ When the Devil … is that dark period where I refused to see and understand why my relationship ended after 20 years…” he explains, not hesitating to use the word “self-destruction”.

“But Mr. Suicide Man is rather referring to a very close friend who went even further in self-destruction: he took his own life. It shows how heartbreaking wounds in love can be. But I have two boys entering their teens and I tell them to remember that while a heartbreak can really hurt and you sometimes think you never get out of it, the heart always has a chance to. regenerate and heal. It's just that, when you're in the whirlpool, you don't see it. This is probably the biggest lesson of my life. “

Thanks to the scouts

Sébastien Lacombe has since rediscovered happiness in love: he shares the life of singer Geneviève Toupin, who has just supported him to write in the language of Shakespeare. “Geneviève is Franco-Manitoban and she is even more bilingual than me. She helped me correct certain texts, sometimes taking them elsewhere, ”reports the singer-songwriter, who nevertheless has a good knowledge of English, since he grew up in the Montreal borough of Mont. -Royal.

“My parents are French-speaking, so I mostly learned English in the street, even before going to school. But I often say that my mother was wrong when she enrolled me in the scouts: I found myself with the anglophones rather than the francophones, for a year. So I had to manage and learn quickly, ”he says, chuckling.

Contrary to what one might think, Fly is above all not the album in English that Sébastien Lacombe dreamed of writing from the start, after four opuses in French to be patient. “This time I was looking to put myself in danger, to run an artistic risk, not to please everyone,” he explains. It was just that I didn't feel ready before. Like most Quebeckers, I listened to English music a lot. I was also in a grunge band when I was 16, 17. But then I fell in love with Harmonium, Offenbach, Charlebois… Even if I had a passion for Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and many others, it was first in French that I saw myself doing a solo career. “

His participation in the shows The Wall Theater Experience and The Wall Live Extravaganza , notably in the skin of the character of Pink, helped to reinforce his decision to cross the fence.

“With these shows, I found myself an interpreter's voice, because the vocal demands were much higher. But now I have the feeling that I don't sing the same way in both languages. You can express things differently in English. It also gave me the necessary perspective from my breakup. I probably wouldn't have been able to write and interpret all of this in French. “

A 1000 piastres chariot

Sébastien Lacombe also returns to a purer folk with Fly . “I loved exploring African sounds on my previous albums, but I was elsewhere. I always wanted to make a record of folk songs, with dobro, harmonica… There are still a few keyboards, although I'm not very synthesizers, but I like the little gospel side of the album. “

Born in several recording sessions, so one at Studio B-12 in Valcourt, Fly was co-produced with Érik West-Millette, collaborator of the previous opus. “Erik helped me a lot in choosing the songs, because I had double the number at the start. He saw several redundancies and thanks to him, I found the story I wanted to tell. “

In particular that of My Thousand Dollar Car , the most rhythmic of the disc. “When we go through a breakup, we remember the beautiful moments we had with this person. I'm the kind of guy who always had rotten tanks. Back when I met my old girlfriend, I didn't really have a home, I just had this 1000 piastres car, and she got on my adventure for six months of vagrancy. It reminded me of those days when I didn't think about my RRSPs or money, when I was free as the air and I did what I wanted. “

Fly was due out last April, but its release has obviously been postponed until this fall. The launch is scheduled for Tuesday, September 29 at 8 p.m. at the Ministry, with webcasting on the Facebook page of the venue and Sébastien Lacombe. It will be a performance in front of a small audience, directed by Brigitte Saint-Aubin, and the album will be played in full.

“After so much waiting, it's like giving birth. In fact, I already feel liberated! “

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Discography

• 2004: As in the cinema ;
• 2008: Human impressions ;
• 2012: Territories ;
• 2016: We will be thousands ;
• 2020: Fly .