“What I wanted, above all, was to see if I was still capable of writing songs. It is in these words that Philippe B retraces the genesis of the album New administration. At Tabac Villeray, where we meet him on a hot May morning, the singer-songwriter is frank: there was no question, for this disc, of attempting prowess. He just had to see if the ability to compose songs, the same as before, still existed in him.
To understand how the brilliant singer-songwriter, after five albums, found himself doubting he could write, we have to go back. It’s been six years since that fifth album, The big night video, published in 2017. In the meantime, many things have happened in the life of Philippe B. A child, a move and, of course, the pandemic. For him, this global crisis notably extended a break he had already taken.
“Initially, it was a voluntary cessation of paternity, from pregnancy. We had created a bubble… which was immediately followed by the health bubble [en raison de la COVID-19]. We’ve been home for a year. “In this context where” we were ready to start going out again, but we couldn’t “, the singer-songwriter therefore remained in his bubble and instead went back to creating.
I always work from home, I have all my stuff, even for recording. I never had the habit of going to work elsewhere. This time there was the baby. I didn’t have the same mental space or time to be alone in my head. So, with this different life, I wondered if I could still. The process was to find that.
Philip B.
In his new rhythm, the artist composed songs while telling himself that better circumstances would come soon, allowing him to better tackle the task.
But with hindsight, Philippe B does not feel like he had better results once his daughter went to daycare and his time was a little clearer. “With a slightly more normal pace, I worked faster, I managed to do more songs, to finish the business I had started,” he says. But in the end, the ideas, the real flashes, the key elements, that’s what I had done in conditions that were far from ideal. When I had to find gaps to work on, the songs were more intuitive and even if I didn’t always have time to resume the next day what I had started, if I found a little time to persevere, it was because that it was worth it. »
Thus, the initial material is “as good, if not better” than what he did afterwards, but above all reminds him of what he was able to create in these unprecedented circumstances. “I had recordings on my phone, a few words or piano and often you hear it screaming back and it stops,” he recalls smiling.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Philippe B’s paternity was a major element around the construction of his new album.
“Same, not the same”
Obviously, the changes in his life inspired the words of Philippe B. “Because I do autofiction, I was going to draw from there, but I had some apprehension to find the right way to do it, explains -he. I thought it would be difficult to avoid this theme [de la paternité], but at the same time, it had to not be too flowery, it had to be interesting for someone who doesn’t have children. It’s always the challenge to write songs: to find angles, particular perspectives, a poetic mechanism to talk about them in an interesting way. »
New administrationby Philip B.
Upon finishing his songs, he moved with his family outside of Montreal, where he had lived for the previous 30 years of his life (and where he eventually returned to live after 2 years). The final product of his months of creation, tinged with all these upheavals, mostly positive, is called New administration. A title that refers to those restaurants that change ownership, but remain the same, from the menu to the decoration. “Everything has changed, everything is the same,” he sings on the title track.
” From [la chanson-titre], I realized that there was a theme, a concept, he explains. Even if I write a guitar song with the kind of poetry I used to do, it may sound the same, but basically it’s completely different. It’s like someone writes plays with two characters all their life and eventually starts writing plays with three characters. There is a fundamental axis which is different, a basic change. When I talked about my life, I often talked to my girlfriend. »
There, I sometimes talk to my girlfriend and sometimes to my child. That changes. But me, even if I change, I am the same. What I’m doing is actually quite similar to what I was doing before.
Philip B.
No pressure to “reinvent” himself for Philippe B. He was able to write a new album, of which he is proud, and that is already very good. He turned to his “classics”, going all the way into the song, while adding high-caliber arrangements. He plays most of the instruments there, he did the sampling (one of his favorite processes), he recorded it and mixed it.
Now that he knows he can still create, Philippe B is just waiting to “pick up where [il] had stopped”. “I don’t have the idea of conquering new territories. I want to resume the relationship with the public where we left off. I like the place where I was, the kind of rooms where I played. Although, of course, I hope that [l’album] will reach as many people as possible. »
Philippe B will be performing in Montreal on June 10, at Studio TD.