| Cœur de Pirate – Blonde (2011) |
Cœur de pirate – Blonde
Location: Montréal, Canada
Born: September 22, 1989
Origin: Montréal, Québec, Canada
Album release: November 7, 2011
Record Label: Grosse Boîte Barclay/Universal Music France
Tracklist:
01 – Leve les voiles 1:12
02 – Adieu 2:27
03 – Danse et danse 3:10
04 – Golden Baby 3:07
05 – Ava 3:16
06 – Loin d’ici 2:43
07 – Les amours devouees 2:27
08 – Place de la Republique 4:11
09 – Cap Diamant 2:43
10 – Verseau 3:53
11 – Saint-Laurent 3:14
12 – La petite mort 3:49
Members:
Béatrice Martin, chef d'orchestre, pianiste et humoriste-en-herbe depuis l'âge de 3 ans.
En show:
Renaud Bastien (guitare, guitare 2, orgue, et batterie quand ça lui tente), Manu Éthier (L'autre junior), Maître Gauthier (le dude qui aparamment fait des bons cosmo, et bassiste), et Julien Blais a la batterie.
Website: http://www.coeurdepirate.com/
Bandcamp: http://musique.coeurdepirate.com/album/blonde
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/coeurdepirate
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/coeurdepirate.officiel
Après avoir immortalisé tout un pan de son adolescence dans les chansons pop douces-amères d'un premier album homonyme, Coeur de pirate s'attaque aux différentes étapes de la relation amoureuse, d'où le titre de l'album, en référence avant tout, à la copine, à l'amoureuse. L'album a été enregistré à l'été 2011 à l'Hotel2Tango sous la gouverne d'Howard Bilerman, coréalisateur avec Béatrice Martin.
Released: 07 November 2011
Réalisation : Howard Bilerman et Béatrice Martin
Prise de son : Howard Bilerman à l’Hôtel2Tango
Prise de son additionnelle : Radwan Moumneh à l’Hôtel2Tango
Prise de son additionnelle pour 4 : François Gueurce au studio Pigalle
Prise de son additionnelle pour 3 : Eric Cheng au studio The Wash ‘N Dry
Prise de son piano : Radwan Moumneh et Martin Léveillé au Studio Revere
Prise de son cordes pour 3, 8 et 12 : Howard Bilerman et Martin Léveillé à l’Hôtel2Tango
Mixage:
Howard Bilerman à l’Hôtel2Tango : 1, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13 et 14
Eric Cheng au studio The Wash ‘N Dry : 3 et 10
Bruno Dejarnac au studio Soyuz : 5 et 8
Julien Delfaud au studio RDPC : 2
Pierrick Devin à Good Boy Studio : 4
Matriçage: Marc Thériault – Le Lab Mastering
Direction artistique: Eli Bissonnette
Production déléguée: Eli Bissonnette, assisté de Jeanne Joly et Laurie Boisvert
Photographie: Clara Palardy
Design graphique: Catherine D’Amours
Author: Nicolas Esposito from France
By Bernard Perusse, Gazette Music Columnist November 4, 2011
4 stars out of five
The opening track of the second Coeur de pirate album, Lève les voiles, is both deceptive and highly appropriate. Sung by Les Petits Chanteurs de Laval and Les Voix Boréales, both made up of children and youths, the brief introduction to the album, while stirring, is musically incongruous. But with its scene-setting quest for a new destination, it introduces, lyrically, a theme of freedom and escape.
Coeur de pirate is the alter ego of Béatrice Martin, who penned 10 of the disc’s 12 tracks and co-wrote the other two. While she has said the album is about relationships in all their phases, there are clearly plenty of cheatin’ and breakup songs here. And the protagonist in these stories – whether that’s Martin or a stand-in once removed – responds to emotional obstacles with assertive self-confidence.
That’s also fitting, given that Martin continues to develop an enchanting artistic voice of her own on this sophomore release, which she co-produced with Howard Bilerman. Best of all, the vehicle she uses here consists of almost wall-to-wall pop gems that mostly evoke French yé-yé singles of the early to mid-1960s. If you like your confessional songs a bit angrier and rawer, or feel more at home when 10 seconds lapse between foreboding piano chords, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
Thumping backbeats, brittle organ fills, chopping and twanging guitars and tuneful bass lines are the rules of thumb here, as demonstrated on wonderful pop nuggets like Danse et danse, Golden Baby and Ava. There’s even a fuzz tone on the mildly countryish Loin d’ici, on which Sam Roberts duets with Martin.
Martin astutely avoids over-emoting in the vocal department, too, sounding downright kittenish on tracks like Les amours dévouées, with its hauntingly perfect melody, and the jangly, joyous-sounding Verseau (the troubled lyrics of which are less upbeat than the music). The subdued approach to singing is perfect, given the kid-next-door sound of the period records that seem to have inspired the album.
The album also holds back – wisely – on the arrangements. Some producers would have gone over-the-top orchestral on the strictly voice-and-piano Cap Diamant or the melancholy Place de la République, which sticks to subdued chamber-pop string adornment.
Only two albums into her career, Coeur de pirate makes few false moves. It would be a mistake to bet against her ultimately becoming a bona fide pop treasure.
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette // http://www.montrealgazette.com
By Andrea Warner
Three years ago, Coeur de Pirate's eponymous debut became one of the few French-language albums in Canada to become a crossover hit with English speakers, thanks in part to singer-songwriter Béatrice Martin's modern, youthful twist on the timeless art of piano-driven pop. Her follow-up album, the recently released Blonde, finds 22-year-old Martin all grown up, delving deep into the '60s for influences from the Beatles and the Beach Boys, crafting sunny-sounding tunes about heartbreak and loneliness.
"I was thrown into an adult world quite quickly," Martin tells Exclaim! from her home base of Montreal. "I was kind of invisible when I was a teenager. I didn't really have a lot of friends. I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. Then all of a sudden I was releasing a record and everybody knew who I was, especially in Quebec. And suddenly everyone knows your story and it's so weird."
She admits that on the surface it would seem as if she had it all after Coeur de Pirate came out. She wanted to fit in and please people, so she attended everything and in return everyone told her she was wonderful.
"I felt really lonely at times," she laughs, ruefully. "Not a lot of people understand that, because they're all like, 'This is so great! You should be livin' the life!' And it was more complicated than that. Through all of it, I didn't really know how to act with boys and keep friends because I was always away. I started getting attached to people who could understand where I was coming from, and the bad part was when I was falling in love with these people and I wanted to learn everything from them, and that pretty much set the tone for Blonde."
The main person she fell in love with was Bedouin Soundclash's Jay Malinowski, with whom she briefly collaborated with as Armistice. She declines to talk specifics about the breakup, but says that the relationship acts as Blonde's throughline, and at first, the songs were written just for her to vent and try to move on, though it took a couple of tries to make it stick.
"There was an angry moving on," Martin laughs. "There's a trying to win back the other person moving on, which is not really moving on, but still. I've been through a couple of phases, especially with this one. I'm really not bitter when it comes to what happened between -- it's fine. It's really just a tribute to him, or how I love too much, maybe? I love too much, but I wasn't even there. It was really complicated and I was just pushing him away all the time because I was so scared of being lonely. I really talk about that in the songs."
Well, if you can understand them. But even if you're not fluent in French, there's a melancholy that lingers just beneath the surface of many of the songs, even though sonically the album is arguably one of the happiest, swingy-iest, warmest kiss-offs yet. Particularly since the album ends on an emotional high note: a song inspired by her current boyfriend and a welcome forecast to the future. Martin is actively working to make sure her romantic past doesn't repeat itself.
"I was my own worst enemy, it was terrible!" she laughs. "Now how I deal with it is I ask, 'Is this what I want for myself?' Do I want something that will make me feel uncomfortable and insecure, or do I want something that will make me feel better and good and wanted and loved? I think that's just something you have to deal with on your own. But I like to cope with it through writing and that's really what happened [with Blonde]".
| Cœur de Pirate – Blonde (2011) |
Cœur de pirate – Blonde
Location: Montréal, Canada
Born: September 22, 1989
Origin: Montréal, Québec, Canada
Album release: November 7, 2011
Record Label: Grosse Boîte Barclay/Universal Music France
Tracklist:
01 – Leve les voiles 1:12
02 – Adieu 2:27
03 – Danse et danse 3:10
04 – Golden Baby 3:07
05 – Ava 3:16
06 – Loin d’ici 2:43
07 – Les amours devouees 2:27
08 – Place de la Republique 4:11
09 – Cap Diamant 2:43
10 – Verseau 3:53
11 – Saint-Laurent 3:14
12 – La petite mort 3:49
Members:
Béatrice Martin, chef d'orchestre, pianiste et humoriste-en-herbe depuis l'âge de 3 ans.
En show:
Renaud Bastien (guitare, guitare 2, orgue, et batterie quand ça lui tente), Manu Éthier (L'autre junior), Maître Gauthier (le dude qui aparamment fait des bons cosmo, et bassiste), et Julien Blais a la batterie.
Website: http://www.coeurdepirate.com/
Bandcamp: http://musique.coeurdepirate.com/album/blonde
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/coeurdepirate
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/coeurdepirate.officiel
Après avoir immortalisé tout un pan de son adolescence dans les chansons pop douces-amères d'un premier album homonyme, Coeur de pirate s'attaque aux différentes étapes de la relation amoureuse, d'où le titre de l'album, en référence avant tout, à la copine, à l'amoureuse. L'album a été enregistré à l'été 2011 à l'Hotel2Tango sous la gouverne d'Howard Bilerman, coréalisateur avec Béatrice Martin.
Released: 07 November 2011
Réalisation : Howard Bilerman et Béatrice Martin
Prise de son : Howard Bilerman à l’Hôtel2Tango
Prise de son additionnelle : Radwan Moumneh à l’Hôtel2Tango
Prise de son additionnelle pour 4 : François Gueurce au studio Pigalle
Prise de son additionnelle pour 3 : Eric Cheng au studio The Wash ‘N Dry
Prise de son piano : Radwan Moumneh et Martin Léveillé au Studio Revere
Prise de son cordes pour 3, 8 et 12 : Howard Bilerman et Martin Léveillé à l’Hôtel2Tango
Mixage:
Howard Bilerman à l’Hôtel2Tango : 1, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13 et 14
Eric Cheng au studio The Wash ‘N Dry : 3 et 10
Bruno Dejarnac au studio Soyuz : 5 et 8
Julien Delfaud au studio RDPC : 2
Pierrick Devin à Good Boy Studio : 4
Matriçage: Marc Thériault – Le Lab Mastering
Direction artistique: Eli Bissonnette
Production déléguée: Eli Bissonnette, assisté de Jeanne Joly et Laurie Boisvert
Photographie: Clara Palardy
Design graphique: Catherine D’Amours
By Bernard Perusse, Gazette Music Columnist November 4, 2011
4 stars out of five
The opening track of the second Coeur de pirate album, Lève les voiles, is both deceptive and highly appropriate. Sung by Les Petits Chanteurs de Laval and Les Voix Boréales, both made up of children and youths, the brief introduction to the album, while stirring, is musically incongruous. But with its scene-setting quest for a new destination, it introduces, lyrically, a theme of freedom and escape.
Coeur de pirate is the alter ego of Béatrice Martin, who penned 10 of the disc’s 12 tracks and co-wrote the other two. While she has said the album is about relationships in all their phases, there are clearly plenty of cheatin’ and breakup songs here. And the protagonist in these stories – whether that’s Martin or a stand-in once removed – responds to emotional obstacles with assertive self-confidence.
That’s also fitting, given that Martin continues to develop an enchanting artistic voice of her own on this sophomore release, which she co-produced with Howard Bilerman. Best of all, the vehicle she uses here consists of almost wall-to-wall pop gems that mostly evoke French yé-yé singles of the early to mid-1960s. If you like your confessional songs a bit angrier and rawer, or feel more at home when 10 seconds lapse between foreboding piano chords, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
Thumping backbeats, brittle organ fills, chopping and twanging guitars and tuneful bass lines are the rules of thumb here, as demonstrated on wonderful pop nuggets like Danse et danse, Golden Baby and Ava. There’s even a fuzz tone on the mildly countryish Loin d’ici, on which Sam Roberts duets with Martin.
Martin astutely avoids over-emoting in the vocal department, too, sounding downright kittenish on tracks like Les amours dévouées, with its hauntingly perfect melody, and the jangly, joyous-sounding Verseau (the troubled lyrics of which are less upbeat than the music). The subdued approach to singing is perfect, given the kid-next-door sound of the period records that seem to have inspired the album.
The album also holds back – wisely – on the arrangements. Some producers would have gone over-the-top orchestral on the strictly voice-and-piano Cap Diamant or the melancholy Place de la République, which sticks to subdued chamber-pop string adornment.
Only two albums into her career, Coeur de pirate makes few false moves. It would be a mistake to bet against her ultimately becoming a bona fide pop treasure.
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette // http://www.montrealgazette.com
By Andrea Warner
Three years ago, Coeur de Pirate's eponymous debut became one of the few French-language albums in Canada to become a crossover hit with English speakers, thanks in part to singer-songwriter Béatrice Martin's modern, youthful twist on the timeless art of piano-driven pop. Her follow-up album, the recently released Blonde, finds 22-year-old Martin all grown up, delving deep into the '60s for influences from the Beatles and the Beach Boys, crafting sunny-sounding tunes about heartbreak and loneliness.
"I was thrown into an adult world quite quickly," Martin tells Exclaim! from her home base of Montreal. "I was kind of invisible when I was a teenager. I didn't really have a lot of friends. I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. Then all of a sudden I was releasing a record and everybody knew who I was, especially in Quebec. And suddenly everyone knows your story and it's so weird."
She admits that on the surface it would seem as if she had it all after Coeur de Pirate came out. She wanted to fit in and please people, so she attended everything and in return everyone told her she was wonderful.
"I felt really lonely at times," she laughs, ruefully. "Not a lot of people understand that, because they're all like, 'This is so great! You should be livin' the life!' And it was more complicated than that. Through all of it, I didn't really know how to act with boys and keep friends because I was always away. I started getting attached to people who could understand where I was coming from, and the bad part was when I was falling in love with these people and I wanted to learn everything from them, and that pretty much set the tone for Blonde."
The main person she fell in love with was Bedouin Soundclash's Jay Malinowski, with whom she briefly collaborated with as Armistice. She declines to talk specifics about the breakup, but says that the relationship acts as Blonde's throughline, and at first, the songs were written just for her to vent and try to move on, though it took a couple of tries to make it stick.
"There was an angry moving on," Martin laughs. "There's a trying to win back the other person moving on, which is not really moving on, but still. I've been through a couple of phases, especially with this one. I'm really not bitter when it comes to what happened between -- it's fine. It's really just a tribute to him, or how I love too much, maybe? I love too much, but I wasn't even there. It was really complicated and I was just pushing him away all the time because I was so scared of being lonely. I really talk about that in the songs."
Well, if you can understand them. But even if you're not fluent in French, there's a melancholy that lingers just beneath the surface of many of the songs, even though sonically the album is arguably one of the happiest, swingy-iest, warmest kiss-offs yet. Particularly since the album ends on an emotional high note: a song inspired by her current boyfriend and a welcome forecast to the future. Martin is actively working to make sure her romantic past doesn't repeat itself.
"I was my own worst enemy, it was terrible!" she laughs. "Now how I deal with it is I ask, 'Is this what I want for myself?' Do I want something that will make me feel uncomfortable and insecure, or do I want something that will make me feel better and good and wanted and loved? I think that's just something you have to deal with on your own. But I like to cope with it through writing and that's really what happened [with Blonde]".