Myriam Gendron Hovers Between Balladry and Freer Spaces

Myriam Gendron is a conduit. She marries the lyrics of poets and folk balladeers to her music or sometimes writes lyrics for traditional melodies. Her first album was a collection of Dorothy Parker’s poetry set to her compositions. But because of her ability to cloak the old in the new, she effortlessly houses old musical DNA in new musical organisms, bridging the original with the traditional in a way that guarantees her music’s timelessness. With each release, wholly original compositions, if there are such things, have begun taking a more prominent role in her music.

Mayday, her third release and first for Chicago’s Thrill Jockey label, demonstrates just how far she’s come from busking Leonard Cohen songs in a Paris Metro or relying on folk songs from her native Quebec, as she did on her second album, 2021’s Ma délire – Songs of Love, Lost and Found. Her voice, akin to a warm first sip of morning tea after a frigid night, and her languorous yet insistent finger-picked acoustic guitar continue to drive the music. Like that second release, she employs a few guests, in this album’s case, Marissa Anderson, Jim White, Bill Nace, and Zoh Amba, collaborations that marry folk-like structures to freer impulses.

Parker’s poetry, as well as occasional traditional melodies or lyrics, continue to appear, though they share more space with original compositions. The record’s opening track, the instrumental “There Is No East or West”, merely simmers and, on its own, would give no indication of Myriam Gendron’s magic. Yet, as a prelude, it makes a certain sense. The follow-up, “Long Way Home”, with White’s supple snare and Anderson’s electric lead lines, is an agile example of how her original compositions, both in their execution and subject matter, feel well worn. Lyrics referencing loss, a “great ship” going down, and a long-extinguished fire set her music against so much of 21st-century Western pace or concerns. “Terres brûlées”, another original, this time sung in French, is languid, spooky, and seemingly not of this world, with a moaning, bowed double-bass adding portentousness to lyrics referencing post-apocalyptic landscapes.

The final track, “Berceuse”, with the lyrics “Go to sleep, go to sleep, my daughter / Sleep until the early morning / I will be there tomorrow / Everything is fine,” with Gendron’s electric guitar rising in intensity and Amba’s bleating, free sax skronk interrupting the lullaby, ends an album full of references to fragility, loss, and impermanence on a note unsettling as it is vulnerable.

Myriam Gendron’s earlier attention to the poetry of others and the rich body of North American folk songs have made her into something of a musical doula, birthing something new while never trying to sever the cord between worlds.