Myriam Gendron - Ma Délire: Songs Of Love, Lost & Found

Seven years passed between Myriam Gendron's debut and this, her second album, and the wait produced something considerably stranger than anyone expected. Ma Délire is a double album of traditional songs in French and English, performed solo and with collaborators who pull the material somewhere it has no business going.

The premise is simple and the execution is not. Gendron takes ballads that have been sung for centuries and plays them straight, in a low, unadorned voice over fingerpicked guitar. Then Bill Nace or Chris Corsano arrives and the song comes apart. "C'est dans les vieux pays" and "La jeune fille en pleurs" are the clearest examples, folk performances invaded by free improvisation without either side yielding. Elsewhere "Shenandoah" appears twice in different readings, and "All The Pretty Little Horses" is given the plainest treatment on the record and is devastating for it.

Very few albums manage to honour a tradition and dismantle it at the same time. This one does, across four sides, without ever sounding like a concept.

Double LP on Feeding Tube Records.