Patrick Watson has noted something different in the attitude of the public since he and his musicians took over the concerts. “Before the pandemic, I sometimes found the public sleeping, not very energetic. Looks like the world woke up today. The spectators are more on, as if they were lucky to finally be able to see a concert. In a way, COVID woke people up”, and him included. He has spent the past two years questioning his understanding of music, a process that can be heard on the enigmatic and evocative compositions of Better in the Shadehis new album.
You can hear it, for example, in the sound of the synthesizers rolling like waves on this sweetness called Little Moments, a tribute to the work of Vivian Maier. ” You know her ? She was a photographer, but in fact, she was recognized after her death” in 2009, at the age of 83. A funny story, says Patrick Watson: shortly before his death, a Chicago collector acquired part of his archives – during his lifetime, it would have taken more than 150,000 shots. Scenes of everyday life mostly sketched in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, from the 1950s to his death. For the past ten years, his work has been exhibited in several major cities around the world.
“I love her photos because often the world clings to big news and big drama, but Vivian Maier’s photo is more of a collection of little moments,” Watson says. For me, life is made of these little moments in which we discover magic. And it’s in those little moments that we also find the best stories. For an artist, taking these little moments in people’s lives and making songs out of them is much more important than writing about big events in the world. I think we serve the public better by doing that. »
Better in the Shade does not address the housing crisis, global warming, the war or the effect of a new variant, but more simply some of the impressions that have been left on us, collectively, over the past two years. Blue, for example, “a song that talks about our addiction to the blues”, not the music, but the state of mind. As in: having the blues or, as Watson puts it, ” to feel like shit. What should not be taken too seriously either, everyone lives that ”.
Learnings
The pandemic has created a context “quite particular and not easy to create”, says the musician, “but at the same time, after twenty years of touring, I took the opportunity to deepen my knowledge, because there are so many things to learn in music. He refined the writing of his texts by reading as many books as possible. “On that, I did a lot of catching up, it’s one of my great regrets, as a songwriter, not having read enough. »
On Better in the Shade, he tackles the themes of intimacy and contact with others with more careful words. Everything, he adds, is in the intention, “in the story you want to tell, and the way of doing it. Personally, I approach it in a very clear and direct way: I can no longer hide behind metaphors, it no longer works today”, the world in which we live no longer supports metaphors, he believes.
The music is now responsible for suggesting images to us, impressionist in the case of this new album on which Watson embraces electronic sounds. Which does not constitute a revolution in Watson’s approach, his song having always possessed this atmospheric, dreamlike, cinematographic character. Launched in the summer of 2021, the splendid song A Mermaid in Lisbon (in duet with the Portuguese star Teresa Salgueiro, singer of Madredeus) announced in a way the tone of the new album by its electronic colors. Watson’s new compositions today seem to be dissolving, breaking up into the sonorities of the modular synth.
Life in electrical circuits
“My first album [solo, Waterproof9, paru en 2001] was also more electronic, recalls Watson. I was then very influenced by Björk, but I had never had time to deepen that. It was my friend Amon Tobin who introduced me to modular synthesizers, and I fell in love with their sounds, warmer than those you can create on a computer. At this point in our videoconference, the musician then leaves his balcony to go to his home studio and show me the synthesizer that he has assembled himself, piece by piece, over the past two years. Boxes placed side by side, wires coming out of everywhere, dozens of small buttons to turn or press. “I find with this instrument the same relationship that I have with the piano”, physical and spontaneous.
“It sounds crazy to say it like that, but it’s a bit like playing with raw electricity. Musically, it makes more sense to me than working with software: it’s lively and unpredictable, the sound is incredible” and he had a clear influence on the way he composed his songs, he says, taking for example the superb Height of the Feeling, in duet with singer-songwriter Ariel Engle (La Force). “I’ve never done a song that sounds like this. What you hear is the synth, played live, without multitracks. I looked for the magic moments” through hours and hours of recordings made to erect these 22 minutes of fragile songs that constitute his new album.
Because, as short as it is, it is well presented as an album, isn’t it? ” Sure, why not ? breathes Patrick Watson. You can call it an album, I don’t see things that way anymore, he explains. You see, for me, A Mermaid in Lisbon is also an album, but very short, because it tells its own little story. Come to think of it, never in a thousand years would I release a twelve-song album today, because people aren’t listening to full albums anymore — or so Spotify stats tell us. Because of that, I feel so much like I’ve lost songs because nobody knows them! A good example: in my opinion, the best song of Love Songs for Robots [album paru en 2015] is Know That You Know. The orchestra recording is exceptional, but no one knows this song, and yet it is by far the best on the album. Looks like she’s lost…”
Thus, Patrick Watson today has a better understanding of the musical world in which he evolves and a very precise idea of the role he plays in it: “Imagine that my life today is essentially to compose the plot sound of people’s,” he says, alluding, without naming them, to the omnipresence of social networks. “Everyone wants to share moments of their lives and to accompany their videos, they choose to put music that touches them. I feel a bit like a composer of film music that will serve a lot of different directors. »