Les Secrets du Ciel

Yann Falquet is best-known as the singer and guitarist who co-founded the award-winning Québécois folk trio Genticorum, celebrated for their exhilarating fiddle and accordion work and stomping foot percussion. Now, after 23 years with the band, he has decided that it’s time to release his first solo album, and show a very different approach. The aim is to ‘adapt traditional folk into a modern dreamy folk universe,’ and he does so by re-working a series of French Canadian ballads. Singing in Québécois French he shows off his fine, relaxed and gently emotional voice and drifting, atmospheric acoustic guitar work, with subtle and elegant backing provided by violin, banjo, double bass, drums, pump organ and clarinet. The set is dominated by songs of travel and lost love, and ‘La Rose’ sets the mood with a story of parting and a reminder that love, like a rose garden, can’t be nurtured from afar. Elsewhere, ‘Courage’ is the story of a soldier who abandons war for the pursuit of love, while the exquisite ‘Les Mers et les Montagnes’ is another bittersweet travelogue. There’s one instrumental piece, the jaunty ‘Sutherland’s March’, in which the backing musicians get a chance to dominate proceedings. A classy, finely performed set.