Vallières builds a bridge between two worlds
In love with American singer-songwriter tradition, French chanson
The success of Vincent Vallières is just another sign of how different the franco music scene ici is compared to English North America.
Vallières is a singer-songwriter. There’s no other way to describe him. He pens and performs ultramelodic, very personal songs that are part Dylan and Springsteen, part Ferland and Vigneault. And his songs play constantly on commercial radio across the province, helping to make him one of Quebec’s more popular artists.
This week, the No. 1 song on Quebec radio is L’Amour c’est pas pour les peureux, the second single from Vallières’s most recent album, Fabriquer l’aube.
Meanwhile, commercial radio on the rest of the continent serves up a steady diet of Katy, Britney and Miley, an all-dance-pop menu all the time.
In a phone conversation with Vallières this week, I mentioned how he nabs all this airplay with songs that are pretty darn accessible but are still very much in the chanson tradition.
“We have the privilege of getting all this support from radio here,” said Vallières, who will perform at Metropolis on Thursday and was driving into town from his home near Mont Orford. “The way we make albums here, there’s really no compromise. When I’m making an album, I’m not trying to copy a commercial international sound. I think that would be a mistake. I would say a band like Wilco has been a big influence on me in recent years, for example.”
We went on to talk about a couple of the rare artists who have garnered radio airplay across North America with a more original sound — bands like Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers.
“Mumford is a good example of an indie band that made a breakthrough,” Vallières said. “Like the Lumineers too. I’m always surprised when I hear these bands on the radio because they don’t have a standard sound made for the radio. Like the song Ho Hey by the Lumineers, which was a major hit. It has a real indie sound.”
Vallières has a sound that borrows from the American singersongwriter tradition but is also steeped in the history of francophone singer-songwriters.
“Like most Quebecers, the music I grew up listening to and that I listen to is American music, but I also listened to an enormous amount of chanson material when I was a teenager,” Vallières said.
“Jean-Pierre Ferland, Félix Leclerc, Gilles Vigneault. Also, all of the Québécois bands from the ’70s. So that really had a big impact on how I write songs, just as much as the American rock music of the ’60s and ’70s. Here in Quebec, we’re really situated right between these two worlds. But on the other hand, there aren’t that many Quebec singers really into classic American rock à la Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen like I am. And to me, that’s the sound I like the most.”
Fabriquer l’aube is Vallières’s sixth album and he’s been popular for years, but his profile hit a whole other level with the release of the single On va s’aimer encore in 2010. This romantic ditty about true love lasting forever struck a chord with Quebecers, and to no one’s surprise, it won the public-vote Félix trophy at the 2011 ADISQ gala as Chanson populaire de l’année. It also helped the 2009 album Le Monde tourne fort to sell more than 100,000 copies.
The song has been played so often since its release — in fact, it’s become a wedding staple — and Vallières has played it so many times, but he says he never tires of it.
“It’s always a pleasure to play it,” he said. “I think it’s probably the best song I’ve written since the beginning of my career. And I’m so happy that people have appropriated it. So I don’t mind at all playing it night after night.”
Vincent Vallières performs Thursday at 8 p.m. at Metropolis, 59 Ste-Catherine St. E., with Andre Papanicolaou. Tickets cost $36.40 via ticketmaster.ca.