Published at 9:00 am.
“I ain’t close to shutting up,” Roxane Bruneau proclaims in the title track of her new record. The tone is rebellious and the singing doesn’t do things by halves. After much doubt and battling what she describes as a severe anxiety disorder, the young singer takes responsibility and asserts herself on “Submerged.” No more impostor syndrome. “If I just capsize, I know how to walk on water,” she assures.
This record contains everything that his “commies”, i.e. his admirers, already love: songs with a burning tone in which the wounds are bluntly expressed, but also the longings. And that hybrid pop sound, with arrangements that seem calibrated to resonate in large venues (she’s done the Bell Center and the Videotron Center, she’s right to hold that) and seem visibly inspired by rock .
Roxane Bruneau is also a rapper. Or almost. The influence of rap can be heard not so much in his music, which he created together with Mathieu Brisset, but very clearly in the rhythm of his singing and in his way of being in general. For her, being in charge is more important than anything else. And isn’t this openness, this “no bullshit” attitude what rappers claim? This perhaps explains why the song Côté Passenger, a duet with Souldia, works so well.
She often goes full throttle and tackles difficult topics like #metoo and toxic relationships, but “Submerged” (male, therefore “gender non-conforming” in her view) is also an intimate record. Roxane Bruneau may have gained confidence, but she can still express that very human fear of losing a love or giving in too easily to the advances of someone who hurts us. She breathes her whole soul into her microphone, you can feel it. And that makes it convincing.
Excerpted from The Whites of Eyes
POP
Overwhelmed
Roxane Bruneau
Arctic disks