“The forthcoming song is a profound one,” Myriam Gendron declares about an hour into her mesmerizing show at the Trades Club.
It signifies a lot when the Montreal musician feels it’s necessary to issue a content advisory concerning themes of melancholy.
Aside from a brief two-song excursion into 2021’s Ma délire – Songs of love, lost and found (which mainly includes Gendron’s reimaginings of classic folk tracks), the evening’s performance draws evenly from 2014’s cult classic debut Not So Deep As A Well and this year’s Mayday, a collection of gradual, often strikingly (and starkly) beautiful songs addressing themes of parting and farewells, painted in the deepest shades of blue, inspired by a recent experience of loss.
An album of poems by Dorothy Parker (unearthing the deep reservoirs of heartache masked by the American author’s signature sharp humor) is set to Gendron’s original melodies; Not So Deep As A Well was released for the first time outside North America last year by the consistently impressive Basin Rock label, located in the nearby Todmorden.
This encourages Gendron to explore the intricacies of the album’s tracks tonight, some of which she hasn’t performed in a while, resulting in an extended set that leads her to ponder whether the audience is seated comfortably enough before extolling the perks of a Sunday in Hebden Bridge, including a traditional Sunday roast.
If mishandled, tonight’s distinctly slow-revealing, leisurely developing, and thematically unwaveringly bleak solo performance might devolve into a tedious trial. However, it attests to Gendron’s exceptional artistry and performance skills that the nearly full house remains utterly entranced, if not completely awestruck, throughout the 90-minute show.
While the crowd responds enthusiastically between the songs, a pin could be heard dropping during the performances. When a dog’s persistent barks suddenly echo from the Trades Club bar, it seems as though the external world is intrusively breaking into the entrancing ambiance established by Gendron’s beautiful melodies.
The audience displays the same level of focus during an enchanting opening set from Zandra, a local trio that slows down the pace to such a degree that time could almost appear to stand still, yet whose haunting folk-influenced songs and minimalist yet subtly layered presentation richly reward the audience’s concentration.
Switching between acoustic and electric guitar, and occasionally employing pedals to create loops and recordings of ambient sounds, along with atmospheric contributions from guitarist Bill Nace, Gendron adeptly transforms the set’s meditative pace and limited volume into a significant asset.
The elegant finger-picked intro to a haunting version of the American folk classic Go Away From My Window is allowed to linger long enough to imply that the piece is an instrumental, until Gendron’s effortlessly emotive, naturally melancholic voice breaks the silence. By manipulating loops and pre-recorded ambient sounds, Gendron’s mesmerizing rendition of the French folk song Au couer de ma délire evolves into an audaciously layered tapestry of sound amidst an evening otherwise defined by deceptively simple execution.
Gendron’s original compositions, on the other hand, resonate like timeless classics recently unearthed, featuring melodies that seem to have been circulating the earth for decades, just waiting for a songwriter to connect with the right frequency to bring them to fruition.
Haunting, desolate yet imbued with tender hope, songs from Mayday such as Lully Lullay and Look Down That Lonesome Road possess as much classic appeal as Michael Chapman’s legendary farewell ballad You Say, which concludes the main set.
