La tête haute

It takes guts to name-check Dylan, Springsteen and Morrison—Jim and Van—in the first verse of a song. But that's just what Jonathan Painchaud does on "La tête haute", a soft-strumming ode to "la plus belle femme à Montréal"—as good a muse as any for a singer/songwriter who wears his heart on his sleeve. He weighs old grudges and other trappings of the past on the wistful "Me laisser porter par les vents", and gets fired up on bilingual rocker "Rat Race". His reveries and soul-searching honesty about life's ups and downs are always lucid and candid.