March 19th, 2008
Sera Cahoone
Québécoise rocker Marjo, back in the 1980s, wrote her penultimate French-language pop-rock hit, Les chats sauvages. It was a song which, despite being a big success in the French-speaking province, reeked of cheese; yes, cheese, as in rinky-dink, second rate, paltry, tacky, unwashed, by-the-numbers cheese. It was bad back then and it’s even worse today, singing about her mind-boggling comparison between the need of humans to be free and the locking up of wild animals.
To give you an idea, the first memorable verse went like this:
On n’apprivoise pas les chats sauvages
Pas plus qu’on met en cage les oiseaux de la terre
Faut les laisser aller comme on les laisse venir au monde
Faut surtout les aimer jamais chercher à les garder
Which, quickly translated, goes like:
We shouldn’t domesticate wild cats
Not any more that we should cage the world’s birds
We have to leave them go like we let them be born
We have to love them not keep them
Poignant stuff.
And as syrupy it may be, I can’t help but think of this song when thinking about Sera Cahoone and her new project. After all, she did break free from her cage behind the drumset of Band of Horses to go with her own style; a laid back, indolent incarnation of dusky alt-country. The arrangements are gentle and welcoming, an explicit sweetness which endears itself to lighter hearts, despite the briny undersheet which tinges a song like Only As The Day Is Long in an tranquil anxiety that yearns to become something else.
Mirroring Sera, I guess, who likely wants to be something else than just another chat sauvage. Meow.