Keith Kouna

“All lovers die in a bouquet of ashes,” chants Keith Kouna in “Bouquet,” a song that perfectly encapsulates the insight of a songwriter who finds light where his contemporaries would see only darkness, desolation, or stupidity.

For over twenty years, the singer has been crafting a work of resistance, countering endemic banality with the imperturbable and insolent smile of music that constantly resembles a celebration. With Keith Kouna, the imminence of the end of the world can’t stop us from feasting.

A helping hand misanthrope, a backstreet cowboy, a great pest; Keith Kouna is both a mad dog and a gentleman. He knows the pain of crying in his beer as well as the joy of yelling his rock his way. Above all, he is one of the most agile songwriters of his generation, capable of combining colorful social portraits with superbly silly refrains or ballads that dig deep. Keith Kouna is not afraid to record a song with the means at hand, but knows how to give those that call for such consideration the royal treatment of a red carpet of strings. Each of his lyrics is a firework of mastery of language, whose rough edges he knows how to tame and whose sweetness he appropriates. But always, with Kouna, song remains an art that must sometimes be ridiculed. A pose that only makes those moments even more striking when, with the utmost seriousness, our man suddenly unwraps his meat onto the table.

A show for all kinds of ears. A duet with Martien Bélanger.