LASTING WEEP

This second posthumous LW album is really the one that made the ProgQuebec releases really worthy, even if for this one, the group had to be revived more than four years after it had folded. Indeed, Jérome Langlois was working on this mega project, based on Sam Taylor's Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, which was to be Lasting Weep's first album. Alas, he never got around to finish it before the group's demise and he kept working at it during his three years in Maneige. As Maneige was slowly changing its Chamber-rock sound to jazz-rock, Langlois decided to leave Maneige, on the "musical difference grounds" and by chance, he was finally finished with his magnum opus. He received an offer to have it played live for a series of six shows over three nights in the Bibliothèque Nationale Du Quebec in the heart of the winter of 76. While it was recorded (with the full technical means as this was a provincial official command), it was never released until some 30 years later.

The show quickly became a multi-media affair with a mime troupe, special decors (including a giant albatross kite), some 17 musicians including the re-united Lasting Weep and the full Maneige line-up (Langlois and Bergeron playing in both), some members of Conventum, L'Orchestre Sympathique and more. The show was pre-rehearsed but not as much as wished due to the number of musicians involved.

Musically the Albatross is closer to Maneige's Les Porches, rather than the other LW release's jazz-rock, as it distils the same kind of chamber-rock. Ranging from classical derived theme to almost free improvisation passages (the start of Préparation) to a poppy tune (the almost-atrocious Jumping Jelly Beans), through the heavy percussion passages (Mort De l'Albatros) and full-drama and goose-bumps-guaranteed moments with Spanish trumpets (the middle section of the same track), the elusive, tentative and intrusive but not vindictive or provocative nature of One By One By One By One and

The introduction called Le Marriage, the only non-Langlois piece (bar the lengthy Schetagne-penned percussion pièce of Malédiction), written by singer Duguay, has some typical pastoral folk influences, but most interesting is the dark and gloomy-doomy bridge leading to the rehearsed free improv of the second track. This second track epitomizes best the whole opus, with its many moods and twists, but La Mort De l'Albatros and Voyage Se Transforme (pt1) are really the centre of the Oeuvre (with a capital O). The second par of the suite is not as near-perfect, but it ends on the reprise of Voyage Se Transforme (pt2, this time) which gives the envy to press your remote control's "play" button again.

Of course all is not perfect in the middle of Quebec's February blizzard as Albatros presents some flaws: Duguay's singing is uneven (and sometimes downright wrong in the Oiseau Des Iles track, ruining an otherwise superb track), the lengthy percussion/drum interludes overstays its welcome by a good four minutes, and other less notable imperfections. If you are a fan of Maneige's early albums, chances are you'll share the skies with the albatross and soar like an eagle for the duration of this album. Highly recommended by start with Maneige before getting to this album.

As incredible as it may sound, if you are aware of Maneige's debut recordings, you'll find that the music developed in Lasting Weep sounds much the same as Maneige Chamber Rock and as far back as five years before. In some ways it is little wonder Maneige could never have found a rock label to release their music, simply because they were way too ahead of their time, even in terms of jazz realm too. Indeed their music was obviously fitting nothing ever heard before (and would unfortunately remain so until nowadays), and it is not hard to understand that most music publishers would be at a loss to actually sell this music especially in a lost place that Quebec was still back in the late 60's, kept under a heavy suffocating blanket of Anglophone domination. If the first signs of cultural uprising had already happened with the Chansonniers' rise, and Charlebois' turn towards rock music with the defying Joual overtones (the local dialect was still somewhat taboo on records) in 67, we are far away from the brilliant and vibrant scene from the 70's, and its fabulous progressive extension of the second half of the decade.

LW's music could not really help out carry out the revolution since theirs was of an instrumental nature, and of a "jazz persuasion" for lack of a better definition back then, so not only were they unnoticed, but (if they'll allow me to say so) also irrelevant - except retrospectively speaking. So apart from some approximate sound quality, the pure qualitative value of the music is amazing: soundwise you could think of Jethro Tull's Time Was with a much more progressive jazz-rock feel. Indeed these demo tapes are dazzling and very impressive at showing the quartet's individual virtuoso playing at their respective instruments.

The first of these sessions consist of three tracks that you guessed it were recorded on April 29th of that year. While the opening track gets us into a jazzy mood, reminding us a bit of Tull's Serenade To A Cuckoo, it is relatively clear that this tracks was not intended for release as such since it veers into a lengthy bass and drums solo session, taking up the last third of the track. De Mi A Mi (demi ami? >> half friend or From Miami?) is an almost hard rocker, where the middle section is taking us into a jazz-rock exploration that soon evolves in a "call and response" from the different musicians including the drummer. Magdalena is another beauty where Bergeron's flute seems to dominate, but Chapleau's bass work is so "all over the place" that it doesn't play second fiddle to none. The track ends up in a flute duo that could wink as Bourée or another Stand Up track. More or less can be included the short studio track Rien Ne Sert De Courir, recorded later that year is much in the same genre, but rougher and rawer. Safari De Pêche (fishing safari) is a soundtrack from a seldom-seen film, where the jazz dimension is greatly diminished in favour of a folkier and more classical and acoustic mood in the first version, while it reappears in the second one.

The next two tracks come from a live concert in Longueuil in 71, and this is where the sound issue gets a little "iffy", but nothing that shameful either, even if sometimes a bit limit; and they get the help of another future Maneige member Gilles Schetagne on percussion. One of the striking differences is how the group sounds so much more electric: Bye Bye gets an electric piano and guitar, but it is probably the weaker track on the album, in part due to the recording. The following 25-min+ Carmen Kétaine is certainly over-stretched, loses itself in overlong soloing, but this is a fine example of early Chamber Rock. But overall on stage, LW sounds like a much more progressive early Tull as they did in the studios.

The last two tracks (again a play on words, here) are from a soundtrack for a math children movie, are a bit anecdotic, but are very charming if understandingly uncomplicated. While this record is hardly essential, compared to the province's future truckload of masterpiece, I have enough respect to give it its fourth star, because of the group's precocious-ness and advance on their musical times.