Have you ever treated yourself to this, a listening party ? It is, for me, the greatest celebration of music there is.
It’s a September morning and artist Jay Scøtt is sitting relaxed three meters from us. Avenue du Mont-Royal is sunny, but here, at Verre Bouteille, we kept the velvet curtains closed. The place in which we find ourselves — around ten people — is therefore dark like the bedroom of a gamer who will not open his blinds all day.
It’s a different kind of game that we’re going to play. A game that requires no skill, no performance. No lives to lose or gain. The only thing there is to do is listen.
Listen to Jay Scøtt’s new album, one song at a time, in the order in which they were placed by its creator. Oh the joy! Being able to concentrate on one thing, without anything interrupting it? The sun already manifests itself differently.
Weigh on play
Jay Scøtt says a few words before weighing in on play :
“The first tune is also the title of the record, All the streets are silent. When I finished the text, I wanted to have piano on it. But yeah, I’m just playing around a little. My manager suggested we send it to Richard Desjardins. »
I imagine Richard Desjardins opening the words in Rouyn-Noranda. Try to hear them before adding a pianistic layer. It’s not because the streets are silent that they don’t say anything…
“You write beautiful poems, toé,” he replied.
Sun
From the second song onwards, everything was done by Jay Scøtt. Sunshinetitle of the second track, is inspired by a question asked in the song come Back to Earth by Mac Miller: “ Don’t you know that sunshine don’t feel right / When you inside all day ? »
How can the sun do you any good if you stay indoors all day? Jay Scøtt doesn’t hide it: he spent time indoors smoking bats. (“The sun puts its arm through the window to light me a cigarette”…) And not knowing what the future will hold. An important part of his life, despite a form of sadness, because it also shaped who he is. And that’s all, All the streets are silent.
Listening to a past, to silence, by Richard Desjardins. Listening to his girlfriend, too, when he returns to the apartment. When she is on the goit allows his man to be in his bubble to create.
I raise my hand before the next tune:
— OK, there’s still a difference between letting your girlfriend listen to where you are in your creative process and what’s happening now: unveiling an entire album in front of a small group of attentive people. Is it embarrassing? Is your heart beating faster? How do you feel?
— Chu proud. It feels good. Chu proud to have done all that.
Back to the source
“Listening sessions” are all the rage in the music industry this fall. Rather than sticking to a traditional album launch concert, we take the time to sit down and listen to the new songs in an atmosphere that feels more like a sanctuary. And that brings us, the oldest, back to the source.
When we left the record store and knew, with the treasure in our hands, that we would soon be able to read it, like a story. As a teenager, my friend Sylvain Cormier brought the vinyl into the basement and played listening party with his friends, excited to hear the new Beatles, for example. Everyone passed the pouch around to admire it.
Me too, I always settled in with the cover. Smaller, because it was that of a CD or a cassette. I unfolded it like a treasure map, which would give me clues to the coveted gift. A gift I gave myself, with my pocket money. Then, read the words as if to be closer to them, live to tapelistening to the disc in its entirety.
In addition, it gave me access to all the names and instruments that had shaped my new acquisition! (We call them credits, and they are as essential as the songs…)
In short, we sometimes forgot the titles – the Discman display instead showed the number of the track —, but we knew everything else. Whether during evening walks around the block or in the chaos of the yellow bus returning from school, we immersed ourselves, alone or together, in its sanctuary.
And we also felt listened to…