Album tracks:
1. Life
2. You don't throw away a love like that
3. Disaster
4. Nothing
5. Me girl, you boy
6. He doesn't love me
7. Cat
8. Evolène
9. Haiku
10. Spoilers
11. I wish you knew
12. Questionnaire
A Haiku, in the Japanese tradition, is a very short poem of 3 lines which evokes the evanescence of daily. For Diane Tell, it is a masterful testimony, in 12 perfect songs, about the impermanence of human feelings.
8 years after the richly folk-rock “Rideaux Ouverts”, the gifted artist and confident independent producer did not rest on her laurels and wanted to get off the beaten track with a remarkably current album of original songs, in all the meanings of the term.
On Haiku , Diane Tell surrounded herself with a team of brilliant iconoclasts who allowed her to follow through with her choices. Under the direction of the always astonishing Fred Fortin, his usual accomplices, François Lafontaine, Olivier Langevin, Samuel Joly and Joe Grass, made the words and music explode like so many fireworks.
The album is presented as an intimate itinerary, with a starting point and an arrival point. He takes off with “Life” that Fred Fortin spontaneously wrote, words and music, for Diana . Far from the rock of Galaxie, he instead wrote the perfect song for Diane Tell familiar, a pretty bossa from Abitibi, tender but bittersweet. He peppers the album with 2 other little gems of nuance and raw soul: “Catastrophe” and “Chat”.
For “Haiku”, Diane has recruited a new collaborator, the Swiss writer of Serbian origin Slobodan Despot who contributes to the 3 titles he has signed, with Diane to music, his writing full of philosophy. “We don’t throw away a love like that”, the first single from the album, gently waltzes about regret and abandonment. “Rien”, with its melancholy humor, jumps to a subtly jazzy melody. “Questionnaire” ends the album with fundamental questions about an assumed contemporary rock which reminds us of the melodist strength of Diane Tell .
Diane kept the lioness's share with 4 fabulous songs, for which she wrote the lyrics and music. “He Doesn’t Love Me” is a heartbreaking ballad of regret, as unforgettable as “If I Were a Man.” “Evolène”, with its haunting rhythm, is an intense but laughing exorcism, colored with the half-tones of Switzerland where she has taken up residence. “Haiku”, all in its subtlety and simplicity, makes its words an intimate incantation of the soul. On “Spoiler”, Diane launched headlong into a fragmented, shaking writing with an obsessive rhythm, to draw a merciless portrait of our fragmented life.
The album is completed by the pretty, tender and warm “Moi fille, toi enfant” which she co-signed with Serge Farley-Fortin and by the very moving “J'would have wanted you to know” by the poet Alain Dessureault on skin-deep music from Serge Farley-Fortin. Diane delivers a powerful interpretation that shakes anyone who listens to it. A big moment.
This pivotal album in the career of Diane Tell was nourished by the images of the great Basque artist Koldobika Jauregi, the sound recording and mixing were done by Pierre Girard and it was the master Bob Ludwig, who Diane was pleased to find out who did the mastering.
Haiku , to listen to again and again because life is worth telling well. –Marc Desjardins