Sébastien Lacombe releases “Gold in Your Soul”

On the back of a rustic guitar melody’s rollicking sway, a simple groove begins to form at the start of “Gold in Your Soul,” the new single and music video from none other than the esteemed Sébastien Lacombe, that will only grow more irresistible in tone as we progress through this four and a half minute folk ballad. Nine short seconds exist between our first making contact with the instrumentation in this song and the introduction of Lacombe’s lead vocal, but in that time, a moodiness takes shape before our very ears that is entirely tangible thanks to the tuneful quality of the harmony, and moreover, the aggressive nature in which it’s being thrust out of the speakers and into the air around us, but rather than repelling the occasional acoustic pop fan, it invites all of us closer to the flash point of its charisma.

Lacombe’s singing is at first as brittle as the string melody is, but as the drums find their way into the mix, it gains both size and strength in the blossoming blanket of harmonies. There isn’t any excess fat on the guitars, nor is there a bloated bassline slithering around in the background as if to drag everything asunder into the realm of dirge folk (something I’ve frequently encountered when breaking down new singer/songwriter material, especially out of the Canadian underground); instead, there is only a stripped-down cohesiveness between the different elements here that sounds organic and anti-synthetic in every possible way. This artist has no room for filler in this single and its music video; in my view, he simply has too much to say to include such dribble in this latest release.

“Gold in Your Soul,” our first look at the upcoming album Fly, comes to a conclusion with a lasting strum of the guitar that, despite fading into the darkness as quickly as it first appeared at the start of the track, is as powerful a statement as any of the words Lacombe has just sung to us could muster. Though I came into this review with some high expectations for Sébastien Lacombe, having been very impressed with what I heard in his last LP, 2016’s Nous serons des milliers, I’m pleased to say that it lives up to the pedigree set forth by its predecessors quite marvelously, and once you’ve heard it yourself, I think you’ll be inclined to agree with me.

Mindy McCall