12″ Lathe Edition of 31. Risograph printed loose leaf cover and back art printed at Looky Here in Greenfield, MA.

OUT OF PRINT

The most excellent Quebecois singer/guitarist, Myriam Gendron, produces music that feels simultaneously home-spun and sophisticated. Her sole LP to date, Not So Deep as a Well (FTR 146) is a gorgeous album whereon she sets the poems of the American intellectual, Dorothy Parker, to her own beautifully crafted guitar tunes. That album was hailed throughout the civilized world, and many fans wait impatiently for Myriam’s two young kids to set her free for artistic endeavors once again.

In the meantime, she has worked on some new material, and it was our extreme pleasure to invite her to play one of the early shows in our QuaranTunes series. The concert took place on the evening of Friday May 8, 2020, and it was a solid gas.

The set featured four of the Parker settings from the LP — ‘Threnody,” “Solace,” “Recurrence” and “Song of Perfect Propriety,” which are all killers. There was also the non-LP “Bric-a-Brac.” which was released on a single (FTR 187). Plus a pair of covers by Montreal’s own Leonard Cohen — “Queen Victoria” (from Live Songs) which Myriam first played back in her busking days, and “Iodine” (from Death of a Lady’s Man.)

At one point, we actually tried to talk Myriam into doing an album of Cohen tunes for her follow-up to Not So Deep as a Well, but she has dreamed up something much more surprising, and is working on it as I type. No one can say when this project will be completed, but it is certain to stun.

While we cool our collective jets, at least she has given us a new live set to soak in. The tunes for the LP have a different heft now, somehow cooler and deeper than their original iterations, and the other ones are, as they say, fantastique!

Give yourself a treat and dial this one up. You will be very glad you did. 

-Byron Coley, 2020