Alix Fernz’s nocturnal look

For me, psychedelia is very brown, if it were a color. Brown like 1970s rock; mine is more of a black leather color. More about hard drugs than acid,” illustrates singer-songwriter Alix Fernz, a young prodigy of the Montreal underground scene, who is today releasing a first album under this stage name, l’intempestif kiss.

Regulars at Esco, an essential performance hall on the Montreal scene, will have immediately recognized him with his jaw tattooed on his neck, he who is on duty at the bar on noisy evenings (the best!).

Nocturnal wildlife is one of his sources of inspiration: “On a little more than half of the album, I recount events that took place during my adolescence,” he explains. My relationship with the private school I went to, its rules, its restrictions, my relationship with drugs, my relationship with my parents. The other half of the record is inspired by what I observe in bars. Certain stories of confrontations, often linked to drugs, which I talk about a lot”, for example on the song Wax : “You get buzzed when you get off the bus / At the table before dinner / You have no choice in hiding it / Otherwise the daronne suspects”, he sings in a groove that is both bouncy and disturbing, before conclude by promising the lady “not to do it again”.

Adolescent stories, we said. “Everything related to self-discovery, I did that when I was younger,” confides Alix (Alexandre Fournier for his sister). ” I have tried everything. Now that it’s done, I’m happy to say that I feel somewhere in my life where I no longer need to see how far I can go in this to try to feel better. I feel like everything I experienced when I was younger allows me to communicate better with people today. »

“My texts are more personal this time and lean less into fiction,” continues the musician. Like in the song Muzzle, for example: I still work with fiction, but to tell stories that really happened to me. I like to put together harder, more intimate lyrics, not necessarily sad, but stiff, with energetic music, I like to create this kind of contrast. »

Spontaneous

A self-taught musician, he caught the rock fever during this tumultuous adolescence, founding his first musical project at the age of 16, Blood Skin Atopic, presenting in 2018 and 2019 no less than three albums — two in English, the last in French, entitled Eczemacrowned Best Punk Album at the GAMIQ gala in 2020.

The rest of his musical history will also be written in French, thanks to Fred Fortin. “Basically, my path is classic: I started making music in English because my musical references were all English-speaking,” explains the musician, an absolute fan of the Californian experimental garage group Osees (formerly Thee Oh Sees) and from the Australian psych-rock ensemble King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard.

“Now, I dated Fred’s daughter when I was 17 or 18 — I didn’t even know who she was at the start of our relationship,” he continues. I started listening to his albums, to understand that it wasn’t a little ass! Fred had a big influence on me. I spent some great times with him, jamming in his chalet. He introduced me to so much music, that of Can, of Gong. In exchange, I got him interested in King Gizzard, [Olivier] He and Langevin have failed! »

There’s a bit of all that in this Bizou that defies categorization. Mixture of punk, French songs, with electronic ingredients referring to new wave. A disheveled, spontaneous, explosive record, which sometimes even borders on pop through the frankness of its choruses.

“It’s really an amalgamation of everything I’ve been listening to since I was little,” Fernz sums up. I listen to so many different things, although my goal, as a composer, is not to compose songs that are always different. It’s natural that I put together all kinds of different musical affairs. Did you notice this spontaneous side while listening to it? The fiercer passages, a little krautrock, which switch to something more pop? The hardest part is making it work. »

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