LHASA

Lhasa de Sela’s dark, smooth voice is suffused with myriad iridescent reflections and its immense vulnerability is, courageously, betrayed by her subtle delivery and troubling lyricism. Above all, Lhasa possesses something of infinite value, something which many of her peers would gladly sell their soul to own: she has presence. When she is performing, her voice, her movements and the look in her eyes light up every single note of the music, right to the final moment of silence into which each song finally returns. Everything about her is alive – there is a tremulous, palpitant pulse running through her being, as if there is a need to continually celebrate the eternal magic of life itself.

The Living Road

• Lhasa
• 5050467-0122-5-7
• Warner Classics & Jazz

“The Living Road” is a more open album and simultaneously more richly nuanced than “La Llorona”; it bears the colours of a popular art which shies away from taking the easy way out or succumbing to habit, and which resolutely refuses to feel obliged to dress itself up in the showy garb of current musical trends. While Lhasa wrote most of the tracks, she co-wrote some of them with Yves Desrosiers, Vincent Segal, Didier Dumoutier and Jérôme Lapierre, as well as working with François Lalonde and Jean Massicotte (old friends and songwriting partners) whose production and arrangements provide the perfect ambiance for the songs: acoustic and ethereal. This is music which denies itself nothing, but which has the supreme virtue of being perfectly balanced.