LÉGENDES

One of Quebec mythical progressive folk album came from the short-lived Le Match, who had time to release one sole album called Légendes. As can be expected when an excellent album hasn't been reissued in Cd format, the vinyl keep disappearing and become scarce on the market, and while I had the album through most of my youth, it got lost during the crossing of the pond, so now thanks to Alain Malette, he's sent me a burned from vinyl Cd-r so I could finally re-listen this album after almost 20 years. As one can expect from the whacky artwork gracing the front sleeve, Le Match's progressive Folk Rock is a bit strange itself.. 12 short tracks (6 aside) of max 5:15, a certainly fun spirit distilled throughout the lyrics and the music, all five members having a good mastery of their respective instruments, Légendes can indeed be considered one of Quebec's small gems that still needs yet to be discovered by the greater public.

The quintet (a standard prog quartet plus violinist/flutist) develops one of the province's more diversified folk rock ranging from the hillbilly-type jigs, to semi-medieval solemn ballads, while keeping a fairly accentless French singing, singing their own compositions While the main songwriter is keyboardist Normand Théroux with 50% of the tracks, the other half handled by either guitarist Pierre Yves Migneron or collective efforts (excluding Théroux), it's most likely to say that each sung their own sung, but both have relatively similar voice (or close enough), thus avoiding a schizophrenic group ala Supertramp and no rift musically speaking. Strangely enough only violinist Leduc seems to soar above the rest of the musicians, not participating anymore than his strict minimum, although he's often in the forefront.

Comparing Le Match with Harmonium's first album or the two Conventum albums, or Brêche's sole effort or L'Engoulevent's two albums, one might say that Le Match is definitely more earthy or hick-like folk rock (I want to avoid "pastoral" when speaking of this album), somewhere Barde took things yet a bit further. In some ways, Le Match's folk rock might be closer to Horslips than Gryphon, closer to Steeleye Span than Jan Dukes de Grey, but closer to Comus than to Pentangle or ISB with a tad of Pink Floyd touch. In some strange way, Le Temps' two albums, while trying to copycat Harmonium's folk success, but end up closer to Légendes without LeMatch's excellent all-around musicianship.

While I wouldn't go as far as investing a fortune on the now-rare vinyl, it is very much time that a label thinks about reissuing this on a Cd format, so I am of course thinking of Sean and Stephen from ProgQuebec, but Unidisc has done a credible job with Opus 5's Contre Courrant. In either case, this album screams out for a legit reissue, before some ugly bootlegger gets his paws onto a mint copy of the vinyl. While the album's title might be a bit too much a compliment to describe the album, one can't say it would be a complete sham either. Just an excellent prog folk-rock album from La Belle Province.