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Montreal's singer-songwriter Myriam Gendron debuted with a collection of songs based on poems by Dorothy Parker, Not So Deep As A Well (2014).
Despite the limitations of the format (voice and guitar), Gendron displays
a unique style that only marginally references great storytellers of the past,
Pete Seeger
(Solace) or
Leonard Cohen (Ballade of a Great Weariness)
or Paul Simon
(Recurrence)
or Joan Baez
(standout The Red Dress).
Her style is both modern and ancient, so ancient that
Song of Perfect Propriety evokes the
medieval troubadours.
In 2015 she set to music two more of Dorothy Parker poems:
Bric-a-brac and The Small Hours (included in the CD version of the album).
Ma Delire - Songs Of Love, Lost & Found (2021) shifted the center of mass towards her guitar playing. The
sparkling strumming in her version of John Jacob Niles' Go Away From My Window works as a psychologist, it illuminates and excavates.
The instrumental version of Shenandoah (I) sounds like a dreamy Leo Kottke.
A profound sense of melancholy penetrates her instrumental Une Rose.
The electric guitar is distorted in the dirges C'est dans les Vieux Pays
and Par un Dimanche au Soir (two traditionals of Quebec), achieving (especially in the latter) an emotional effect similar to the one achieved by the harmonium in Nico's music.
Her voice and guitar mix with field recordings in the seven-minute version of the traditional Au Cœur de ma Delire, and here it's the voice to create the atmosphere, evoking darkness and loneliness.
An original, Farewell, shows her skills at penning catchy folk songs, almost a melodic remix of Bob Dylan's Blowing in the Wind.
There are only four original songs on this album.
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