by David Wilikofsky
When Myriam Gendron’s debut album, Not So Deep As A Well, was released in 2014, it was heralded in some parts as a modern folk classic. The album saw Gendron setting the poetry of Dorothy Parker to effortless guitar arrangements, but we’ve heard little from her since; in the intervening years Gendron performed live a few times but largely disappeared into her real life, caring for her two young children and working a full time job. After receiving a grant in 2020, Gendron was able to take time off work and devote seven months to writing and recording her latest record, Ma Délire: Songs of Love, Lost & Found. It’s a magnum opus, a sprawling seventy minutes of music that sees Gendron both doubling down on the strengths of her debut and expanding her sonic palette.
Much like Not So Deep As A Well, many of the songs on Ma Délire are found material. While beginning to write the album Gendron immersed herself in the traditional music of Quebec, America, and France, and the songs she discovered served as the foundation for the project. Gendron took artistic license with these pieces, picking and choosing musical and lyrical phrases to recreate them in her own image. Although fans will find plenty of the impeccable arrangements and spellbinding vocals that make her debut so beloved, many of the album’s most compelling moments are the ones that sound unexpected. “Au coeur de ma délire” uses field recordings for ambiance, the chirps of insects transporting you to a campfire in the middle of the woods. The angular guitar lines (courtesy of Bill Nace) on “C’est dans les vieux pays” play off Gendron’s mellifluous vocals, the two pushing and pulling against one another. Chris Corsano’s drumming on “La jeune fille en pleurs” transforms the song into a ballad emanating from a smoky Parisian cafe. These and other songs represent entirely new sonic worlds for Gendron’s art to inhabit.
Perhaps more than anything else on the album, Gendron’s two renditions of the traditional American folk song “Shenandoah” are emblematic of her approach to her source material. The first is an achingly beautiful instrumental that interpolates the song’s melody; the second is a more straightforward vocal rendition except it’s performed entirely in French. Both unmistakably descend from the original, but Gendron is unafraid to take these standards and transform them into something unique and personal. Just as she did on Not So Deep As A Well, she breathes new life into these old words and melodies, creating something that sounds both modern and timeless. After sitting with this music for the past month I’m still discovering new details on each listen, but this much is self-evident: we may have had to wait seven years for this album, but it was worth it.