Harmonium XLV: 45E Anniversaire

Harmonium's first album was recorded as a trio. Singer-guitarist Serge Fiori and guitarist Michel Normandeau wrote all the music and lyrics. Bassist Louis Valois completed the band. A session drummer, Rejean Emond, appears on half of the songs. Acoustic bass, 12-string guitar, and acoustic guitar constitute the main instrumentation, all topped by Fiori's delicate voice (singing in French). Lyrical themes all relate to 1970s humanism. The music belongs to folk-rock with a progressive rock touch (this last trait would become stronger with each successive release), and could be compared to McKendree Spring or Fairport Convention. Harmonium includes "Pour un Instant" ("For a Moment"), which became a hit in the summer of 1974 in Quebec and remains to this day the best-known song of the band, enjoying constant radio airplay. "Harmonium," "Aujourd'hui, Je Dis Bonjour a la Vie" ("Today, I Say Hello to Life"), and "Un Musicien Parmi Tant d'Autres" ("One Musician Among Many Others") have been standard singalongs around campfires for decades and remain some of the first songs any young Quebecois starting on guitar will learn to play. The CD reissue includes an extra track, "100,000 Raisons" (first released as the B-side to "Pour un Instant"). Musically speaking, Harmonium is the less developed, less ambitious opus of the band, but the more representative of Quebecois culture at the time (the aesthetic is similar to Beau Dommage and Paul Piche, other key artists of 1970s Quebec). That is probably why it remained the most popular in Quebec, but the least popular elsewhere. ~ Francois Couture