So, yeah, I found my camera, and uploaded the photos from January. Woot.

If you don’t know, now you know.

Foam Hands (MP3):

Rivers (MP3):

Unknown Title (YouTube only):

Choruses are unwilling. Her lyrics appear one by one, like flat stones set on a table.

It’s not a very catchy music, and outside of her work with Herman Dune, The Wooden Stars or Eric’s Trip, it lacks any real instrumental sparkle. Unlike with Cat Power or Songs:Ohia, her voice doesn’t feel like the manifestation of a platonic misery: a throat finally expressing what sadness feels like. No, what makes Julie Doiron among my favourite artists is the feeling of honesty in her songs. For those of us who value this (the impression that an artist “really means it”), Doiron is extraordinary. She does not say too much, or too little. She sings with great care. And she always seems to be telling the truth.

And so her love-songs (particularly in french, on Desormais) are breathtaking: rose-and-dusk pleasures strung together on a melody. Her songs of heartbreak or indecision resonate long, long, long, when played on the right afternoons. And the songs that began to appear in the past four years or so, songs of motherhood & children & family, they are so unadorned in their sweetness that it’s very hard not to, well, melt.

Julie Doiron mp3s and write-up on saidthegramophone.com

http://www.myopenbar.com/bars.php