Alexandrine Rodrigue, who leads the group Douance, makes a certain shift with her first full-length album, both in substance and form. At the center of this gentle mutation, there is music with a grunge and shoegaze flavor that is more elaborate than in the past, but above all a more complex and more luminous relationship to its flaws and its doubts. This album to be released on Friday is called Monstera beast in the process of being tamed.
The basis of the comparison is the EP that Douance released in February 2021, recorded in the “shed” of its director, Dany Placard, who also plays there, in the company of genre veteran Julie Doiron. Six raw, lo-fi tracks, recorded simply and carrying dark thoughts, anguish, death.
This mini-album still gave Alexandrine a good boost on the alternative scene, she who notably made it to the semi-finals of the Francouvertes and who has since signed with Costume Records.
The sound, first. “The lo-fi side of the EP is a genre that inspires me a lot, it’s often what I listen to on my own,” notes the musician, who is a trained photographer. But with the album, it seems like I didn’t want to do the same thing. Then, it seems like I wanted to be able to prove to myself, and then to everyone else, that I was capable of doing the opposite. »
To realize Monster, Douance this time placed his trust in Vivianne Roy, from Hay Babies and behind Laura Sauvage, for whom it was the first experience in this position, except for her own projects. “It inspired me a lot to tell myself that, together, we were going to learn, then move towards a common goal,” explains Alexandrine, 29 years old. She helped me with the direction of a couple of songs and she also helped me gain confidence in certain songs that I didn’t quite know if they were worth recording or not. Then she found good hooks. »
Douance has also gained strength thanks to the four other talented musicians who add their touch to the ten songs on the record, namely Mélanie Venditti, Agathe Dupéré, Marc-André Labelle and Raphaël Léveillé. Together, they did a week-long residency to build each piece from Alexandrine’s models. “Then, in the studio, we recorded everything in live. We were all in the same room playing at the same time. Then, afterwards, we also added tracks on top,” says the singer to illustrate that the record “is really larger” than the EP.
Monster therefore breathes more, displays very varied colors, passing from moments stoner heavier to segments flirting with alternative pop à la Bowie — the intro to Worries remember Heroes.
Waves
Douance therefore opened the floodgates on the musical side, but this transformation is also taking place in the work of Alexandrine Rodrigue as a lyricist. The torments are still there, but there is hope that finds its way through the texts, where emotions come and go like waves.
“The lexical field, the imagery around the word “monster”, inspired me, whether for self-perception, self-confidence, vulnerability, the strange,” Douance first explains. These are themes that I wanted to tackle, and they are also things that I coexist with, and that I think about often, which “drive” my writing. »
“Stop worrying / About everything and nothing” are the first words sung by Douance on the record. In the middle of everything, as a pivot between the sides of the vinyl, there is also the title track, Monsterand his alter ego, I’m not a monster anymore. Still, the beast will rear its head a little further away, notes the artist. “From the beginning to the end of the album, I want the monster to be there, for it to disappear, for it to reappear, and then in the end we say to ourselves that it’s okay the same, you know? »
It is, says the native of Chicoutimi, an attempt to “let go, to take things less seriously” and to move “towards something a little brighter”. The piece clip Worries is a good example: we see a row of dogs happy to be happy. To illustrate the very personal record, Alexandrine also opted for an old photo where we can see her cat Gomette in costume. Recent press photos also show the artist with two large basset hounds. “You literally can’t look at those dogs and then be in a bad mood. »
While being of its time, Douance therefore has a relatively unique signature in Quebec. And Alexandrine, who knew from her youth that she wanted to make music, does not hide her ambitions to take her project further. The one who was part of the Chassepareil group for several years believes, with a little embarrassment, that she has “really a lot of ambition”.
“I would really like to make a living with it, have some fame and then ultimately leave Quebec, then Canada. I would really like to go to Europe, go to the United States. I know it’s more complicated because I sing in French, but I hope I can find a way to get over this wall. »
And the compromises in this journey that we wish for him? The turning point made on Monster is in a certain way a way to “fit” one’s ambitions”, but at the same time she specifies that she wants “a career that coincides with [son] artistic identity. “I don’t think I’m going to change the way I write because I want more success, more of this, more of that. It might even be the opposite, because right now, what has given me the most success at the level I am at right now is staying true to what I wanted. to do, to follow my intuition. »