CATHERINE RIBEIRO + ALPES
Politically charged and seductive… psych, folk, prog, rock!
No 2 (reissue, 1970), Âme Debout (reissue, 1971) Paix (reissue, 1972) ANTHOLOGY 7/10, 8/10, 8/10 EVEN before recording the three psych-folk-meets-progrock albums that made her a cult figure, Portugal-born singer Catherine Ribeiro had some serious form. Relocating to France in the late 1950s to study acting, her first gig was, most auspiciously, in French New Wave provocateur Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film Les Carabiniers. Talk about starting as you mean to go on: Ribeiro’s lyrics for this stunning trilogy of albums with Alpes were often as politically charged as Godard’s strongest work; later in her career, she’d become a strong advocate for immigration, and would co-sign a petition condemning the war on Iraq.
Ribeiro held down parallel careers in film and music across the 1960s and 1970s, and as much as she was a compelling actress, her most powerful performances were on a string of wild albums made alongside ongoing collaborator Patrice Moullet. Other members would come and go, but after a first album as Catherine Ribeiro + 2 Bis, the duo of Ribeiro and Moullet would stay steady. And if an earlier run of 45s had Ribeiro playing the French pop ingénue, well, that was little preparation for what she unleashed across No 2, Âme Debout and Paix.
Part of the puzzle of these albums is exactly what Moullet brought to the table. He was also an actor – indeed, he appeared alongside Ribeiro, under the pseudonym Albert Juross, in Les Carabiniers. His brother Luc was a filmmaker, and as part of the French New Wave, a peer of Godard. Patrice had also studied music, undertaking five years’ study in classical guitar and flamenco, and was an instrument builder – and indeed, that’s his ‘percuphone’, an instrument for a motorised struck bass string, you can hear across some of these albums. The combination of Moullet’s avant-garde inventions, the expanded, unravelled song structures of prog, and the fragility of French folk music, made for unexpected combinations, particularly on the latter two albums, which are among the peak of French music of the 1970s. But the real shock is the fearless fury of Ribeiro’s vocals – her voice often is strident, declamatory, inching toward the possessed, moving into something close to stream-of-consciousness on No 2’s “Poème Non Épique”. She’s also capable of great sobbing gasps of melancholy, particularly when Alpes’ songs go introverted, and she’s caught in a spun-glass cradle of silvery acoustic guitars. If that balance defines No 2, Âme Debout feels more modular, an album of set pieces that fully integrates the psych, folk, and prog elements at play; the title track is possibly Ribeiro’s single greatest moment, where her voice seems to constantly ascend up into the skies, calling upon forces as yet unknown. Paix goes further still, circling around two lengthy songs that are as undone as they are rigorously conceptualised, as feverish as they are seductive.