Quebec album releases on our radar in 2023
The new albums of Vanille, the group Blesse and Zoo Baby are to be watched in 2023.
At the dawn of a brand new year, we dream of all the new music that will compose the soundtrack of our lives. In addition to the releases of albums by Matt Holubowski, Maude Audet and Thierry Larose, which are among the most awaited cultural novelties of the year from Métro, many other Quebec albums will make their way to our ears. Here comes 10.
Rau Ze
The young group mixing jazz, soul and R'n'B which won the Francouvertes in 2022 is, at the time of writing, in the studio to record its first album. After seeing the groovy passion at workmusicians (including Jeremy Leon on saxophone and Violet Hébert on trumpet) and the vocal prowess of singer Rose Perron opening for concerts (including those of Ariane Roy and Marilyne Léonard), we look forward to 'hear everything theband has in store.
hurts, normal
At the abrupt end of Zen Bamboo in the summer of 2020, its ex-members Léo Leblanc, Xavier Touikan and Charles-Antoine Olivier had promised to come back together under another name, another form. Promise (tremendously) kept with their project hurts! Thanks to the excellent rock songs meteor, arid love and plastic pearl, rich in synthetic textures and incandescent guitars, the trio has already proven that creativity is always there. While the upcoming album is titled normal, the music that shapes it doesn't format to any standard.
Released March 24, Simone Records < /strong>
Goodbye Karelle, Hugh Greene & TheLucies MadeMe
Actress Karelle Tremblay has more than one artistic talent to her credit. The proof: her new solo musical project, Goodbye Karelle, for which she unveiled the melancholic rock-folk song Blender and announced an album this year on her Instagram account. We had already heard the languorous voice of the headliner of You will remember me and The disappearance of the fireflies on the play Alma by Emma Beko in 2021.
Spring release, 444%
Zoo Baby, Volume2
Xavier Dufour-Thériault, at the microphone and guitar of the rock group Gazoline, once again slips into the skin of his casual crooner alter ego (as he describes himself so well) Zoo Baby, who had furiously and voluptuously grooved with his first album of the same name, released in 2020. As an appetizer to Volume2, produced like the previous one by Julien Mineau (Malajube), the songs Your apartment and Different from you, with a retro cachet inspired by French chanson, are both adorned with delicate arrangements of strings and winds, which suit the singer of Pomme.
Released February 11, Duprince
Mirabelle, Flickering Lights
Mirabelle is Laurence's enveloping Anglo project Hélie, who released two French country-folk albums in the early 2010s. After Late Bloomer, her first album under her new pseudonym released in 2020, grew up listening to The Cranberries, and Mazzy Star will drop the five-track EP this winter Flickering Lights, which, along with wispy folk-rock songs such as Acid Rain and Good Sad Story< /em>, promises to captivate and move.
Released January 27, Simone Records
Dumas, Cosmology
Never has the love of Dumas fans withered. Listening to Movement and Leitmotiv, the first two invigorating electro-pop excerpts from his 12th album, Cosmologie, we feel that the esteemed singer-songwriter is still as inspired, five years after Our ideals. He will undoubtedly be able to keep the flame of his loyal audience alive.
Released January 27, La Tribu
Florence Blain Mbaye, Lines of Desire
In addition to shining on stage in theater and on screen, actress, dancer and professional oboist Florence Blain Mbaye will highlight her warm voice on a debut album, Lines of Desire. Stand, a hushed and grounded neo-soul piece whose music video features actors Catherine De Léan and Vlad Alexis, definitely makes you want to discover her face as a singer-songwriter.
< br>Released February 24, Bonbon
Vanilla, The Glade
Music inspired by 1960s French folk and chanson by Rachel Leblanc, aka Vanille, is tinged with baroque accents on The clearing, his second opus. Wood, a piece with a dreamlike atmosphere, “embodies the feeling of fullness encountered in autumn and winter forest walks”, reads a press release. If we rely on the first extracts, we bet that this fullness will permeate the album in its entirety. Note also the presence of Alexandre Martel (known as Anatole) and Guillaume Chiasson of BonEnfant among the collaborators of the singer-songwriter.
Released on February 3, Candy
N NAO will be releasing their second album in the spring. Photo: Naomie de Lorimer
N Nao, Water and Dreams
With such a title, we can predict that the second album of the transdisciplinary dream pop artist NNAO (Naomie de Lorimier of her real name) will transport. This is at least the case of the first extract, La plus belle chose, which encapsulates “the exquisite sweetness of an afternoon shared in the studio, in the forest and by the water”, writes the singer with an ethereal voice whose music reflects the beauty of nature.
Spring release, Mothland
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Tribute to Renée Martel, It's our story
Renée Martel, who died in December 2021, will be entitled to a tribute album imagined by her daughter, Laurence Lebel, who proposed a superb cohort of artists to offer their version of some of the songs of his illustrious mother. To contemplate the Gab Bouchard, Saratoga, Klô Pelgag, Fanny Bloom, Ariane Roy and others Tire le coyote sing the memory of the icon, it is clear that the power of his heritage within the Quebec musical landscape transcends the country. An opportunity to discover his work differently.
Released March 24, Artifice
