The next album by Les Sinners (though with the name shortened to just Sinners) for Jupiter, Vox Populi (Latin for “Voice of the People”) came out in 1968 and is among the crush of “concept albums” that followed in the wake of the Beatles’ 1967 masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The album has acquired legendary status among fans of Quebec’s musical scene. The album is entirely in French and is probably the first and certainly one of the best French Canadian concept albums ever released. A whole barrel of musical influences are present: the Beatles, the Monkees, the Byrds, the Who, Indian music, etc. The cover appears to show Jesus speaking in a snowy cemetery.
Remarkably, a CD reissue of the album in the early 1990’s was reportedly in English. Another curiosity about this album is that Jupiter Records also released a third album that was purportedly a compilation album, called Chantent 24 Succes. Actually the 24 songs are composed of both of the Jupiter releases, Sinnerismes and Vox Populi, that were squeezed somehow onto a single vinyl disc. “Two-fer” albums were commonplace in the CD era, but this album came out in 1969.
(April 2013)
