I’m listening again, with pleasure, to L’amour est sans pitié, a 1990 album by the interesting Canadian rocker Jean Leloup. Leloup (“The Wolf”) is a stage name for Jean LeClerc, who was born in Quebec, but spent his childhood in Togo and Algeria, returning home at age fifteen. After an apprenticeship in the Quebec rock scene, he briefly found some national and international success with this album, which has songs in both French and English. He combined rock with rai elements long before anyone else was doing this in North America, and his lyrics are clever. I’m told that a subsequent album, Le Dôme, which was not as widely distributed, is even better. I haven’t found a copy yet. I understand that he subsequently published a philosophical novel called Noir destin que le mien, which I haven’t seen.
