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Hubert Lenoir
Darlene
Simone - 2018
Michael Panontin
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Hubert Lenoir has come a long way since his early days in the Seasons. As a member of that Quebec City quartet - okay, from the tiny suburb of Beauport, to be completely correct - Lenoir helped add to the canon of ultra-twee disposable pop with ditties like the fetching single 'Apples', which has thus far managed nearly a half-million plays on YouTube. The group's lone full-length, 2014's Pulp, was also issued across the pond in France to considerable success (and this despite being sung entirely in English).
But it was in the winter of 2017, after a particularly gruelling tour that finished up at the Olympia de Paris, that Lenoir set his eyes on much more adventurous pursuits. "Fuck it," he said to himself, "I'm writing an opera!"
And so, while back home in Quebec with his life partner, writer Noemie D. Leclerc, and with a stack of records that ranged from Prince to Brian Eno to Oscar Peterson, the then 22-year-old Lenoir started fleshing out songs to complement Leclerc's own literary ideas. "We were next to each other in a tiny apartment," he explained to SOCAN, "and at some point I decided that my songs would be a reflection of her story, Darlene."
Darlene the album is a revelation, a sonic tour de force that recalls in spirit, if not always in execution, the overarching early-seventies ambition of Todd Rundgren's Something, Anything or Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - and fans of either will no doubt find plenty to chew on. Lenoir takes the listener down many pleasurable avenues, from piano bar musings ('Fille de personne I') and toe-tapping soft-rock (the single 'Recommencer') to blue-eyed soul ('Fille de personne II', 'Ton hotel') and uplifting pop ('Cent-treizieme rue'). Of the record's decidedly upbeat tone, Lenoir had this to say: "Darlene was my cure for sadness. I would gorge myself with soul and the Motown sound. I had an idea, a feeling for what I wanted. At times, I was literally in a trance, in a zone where there were no limits, a place where there's nothing else but sheer beauty."
Sheer beauty indeed.
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Hubert Lenoir
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