VA - Putumayo Presents Quebec (2008)

Review by Adam Greenberg
Released to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Quebec City, Putumayo's collection of Quebecois music spans the full range of possibility from contemporary pop to indigenous-based folk. The album opens with a piece from Mathieu Mathieu that could easily pass for a bit of French café music. DobaCaracol provide a contemporary alternative sort of background with light, lilting French vocals slithering over the top, and Martin Léon starts out his contribution with some light guitar and whistling à la Ennio Morricone (under whom he studied for a time), before adding a funkier rhythm and some electronic instrumentation for a catchy total. Quebecois idol singer Annie Villeneuve adds a vocal reminiscent of Evanescence to her track, and Chloe Sainte-Marie almost evokes Johnny Clegg's work with her quicker, earthier sound. Kashtin's Florent Vollant provides the single track on the album not in French (he sings in his native Montaignais for the most part), Les Cowboys Frigants' Marie-Annick Lépine moves from the frenetic sound of the Cowboys to a dichotomously opposed loping folk in "Au Chalet," and Myreille Bedard provides a light bossa nova with just a touch of chanson hidden away inside. Polemil Bazar successfully mixes klezmer aesthetics with a trippy circus sound, and after one of the most traditional (and almost Celtic) pieces on the album from La Bottine Souriante, the set closes with a different, more French-influenced traditional sound courtesy of Le Vent du Nord's accordion, violin, and hurdy-gurdy. Where many Quebecois compilations would have you believe that Quebec is all French cafés and extended chansons, this album makes a good show of the range of sounds, including much of the contemporary styling of the province, to good effect. Worth a spin for anyone curious.