Liverpool Sound and Vision 7.5/10

What we envisage, what we dream of, is quite often so far hidden in the Horizons that we can barely see it as our own truth, it is covered only in a glorious tempting haze and one that is for the vast majority of time, forever out of reach. It is the act of forever hope that we that we keep striding towards, that we reach out to because we are cursed with both reason and imagination and one that is starkly shown as the plucked flower of memory when we succeed or fall in our attempt to go beyond the prospect to which our life was set.

The Flower of Memory, one tinged in mauve carnation or at least in the white lilac, is there to remind us the horizon can also bring the dawn, the struggle of the darkness is left behind and instead we have new beginning in which to chase our dreams down, to leave the keys which were always hung around our belt at the prison door. It is this souvenir of thought that the Horizons can act as a guide to where we need to go, and if fortunate lead us to place where the song is as beautiful as the accent it is sung in.

For the three members that make up the band Vishten, Emmanuelle and Pastelle LeBlanc and Pascal Miousse, the skyline may look very different from where we sit and daydream our lives away, not only do they have the beautiful scenery of the dominant countryside to wet their appetite, they also have the language of poetic beauty in which to underline their point of continually holding the dream within view. To bring joy in another language is one thing, to showcase it with natural pause and wonder to arguably a section of society that will be slightly perplexed about its meaning, but nonetheless intrigued about the songs whispering through the grass and the Acadian tradition.

With songs such as J’aime Vraiment Ton Accent, Fleur Du Souvenir, Les Clefs De La Prison, L’autre Femme and L’Hermite all combining to offer a sense of entente cordial, a vision which goes past the vanishing point and is more than a viability, it is a certainty of French/Canadian cool.

Vishten’s Horizons is available to purchase now.

Ian D. Hall