When Marie-Mai is plagued by stage fright for ten days before her first lifelong comedy gala at the ComediHa! Fest-Québec didn’t stop them from putting on a musical performance worthy of their reputation on Friday night’s main stage at Festivent de Lévis.
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It was a rare appearance at a festival this summer for the one who will celebrate her twenty-year career in 2023 and whom we’ve seen mostly on television in the animation of Big Brother for the past year.
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Despite the presence of a hard core of raucous admirers near the stage, the princess of Quebec pop didn’t have the easiest of audiences in front of her, but she managed to shake many of them out of their torpor thanks to her flawless enthusiasm. .
Seeing her dancing uninhibitedly and singing Elle et moi from the start made her feel once again that every time she goes on stage it’s the best day of her life.
“Thanks for following me”
It was also, at least in the early moments, an opportunity to reminisce about her recent move towards more urban pop, as four of the first five tracks on the program come from her 2018 album Elle et moi, on which she strays from the pop-rock universe that made him a star.
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In one of her speeches, Marie-Mai also thanked her fans for following her in all her musical bifurcations. “I’m very proud of that. You always let me make the music I wanted.”
She then dug that furrow further by inviting Claudia Bouvette to come and sing her hit Douchebag with her, and then by interpreting her collaboration with rapper Imposs without tomorrow alone.
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However, the Marie-Mai of the beginnings is never far away. “I feel like rocking my life a little,” she said, blasting Point Blank, one of the many forays into her previous catalog that marked the second part of her concert.
injured knee
During her last visit to the Videotron Center, Marie-Mai was criticized for breaking the rhythm with ballads and a break.
None of that on Friday. The pace stayed high until the end. Hair in the wind, she very effectively lined up COBRA, C’est moi and the intense double I run / Without screams or hate.
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It was so intense that Marie-Mai said she injured her knee somewhere in the middle of the concert, she guessed. “I’m a soldier,” she assured her fans, “we made the show to the end.”
In fact, she ignored the pain and ended up jumping around like nothing had happened.
Klô Pelgag: By whispering
While their imaginative pop and sweetly eccentric gigs are invariably a treat, and they still were, Friday night’s Klô Pelgag might not have been the appropriate artistic vehicle to bridge the gap with Marie-May.
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Between the rolling fairground rides and the whispers of festival-goers, the creator of the brilliant Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs album looked like an alien who landed on the wrong planet.
However, it would be wrong to think that it would affect her. Without the staging elements of their indoor show, Klô Pelgag and her imposing team of musicians, dancers and choir singers still unfolded all their usual madness in a soundscape that was sometimes reminiscent of psychedelic rock.
Sophia Bel: not ideal
Montreal’s Sophia Bel, pop-punk’s new torchbearer, swept by to start the evening in a less-than-ideal context. Namely in front of a handful of more or less attentive viewers.
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This may explain why we feel we only saw part of the potential of this young woman, who seemed hesitant at times and experienced ups and downs vocally.
But the base is there. There are some good songs on his album Anxious Avoidant, released earlier this year, and his stage persona, once tweaked and with more bite, could end up imposing.