Who is Valérie Carpentier?
Introducing the next Marie-mai
OK, so you know who Marie-Mai is. But your homework isn’t finished. Now you have to get up to speed on the next Marie-Mai.
Her name is Valérie Carpentier and, like Marie-Mai, she’s been brought to the top of the local vedette heap thanks to a super-popular music-contest TV show. In Carpentier’s case, the show was La Voix, the Québécois version of The Voice.
Carpentier, who turned 20 this week, won the first edition of La Voix, which aired on TVA at the beginning of the year and got monster ratings, averaging 2.5 million viewers every Sunday night, giving the show an astonishing 63 per cent share of the local TV market.
This week, the singer from the small t own of Ste-Anne-de-la-Pérade in the Mauricie region launched her first album, L’été des orages, which was made with a little help from her friends. Her “coach” on La Voix was Montreal pop star Ariane Moffatt, who has taken the young woman under her wing. Carpentier’s artistic direction is handled by Mo’fat Management, which is run by the singer’s sister Stéphanie Moffatt, and the album was produced by Alex McMahon, who has worked with Moffatt as well as Daniel Bélanger and Yann Perreau.
Moffatt, Bélanger and Perreau contributed songs to Carpentier’s album, and there are tunes from other noted local artists, like MariePierre Arthur, Pierre Lapointe and Alex Nevsky.
You might think that the winner from a TV music contest would crank out a paint-by-numbers album. But you would be so wrong in this case. L’été des orages is actually a sophisticated collection from a young singer who digs classic French chanson icons like Jacques Brel and Barbara but also has a taste for Bob Dylan. Her voice and the arrangements remind me a little of Lana Del Rey. In short, it’s high-end contemporary chanson fare.