Tell me about the genesis of this album that you wrote for the first time in French, with the exception of one song.
It happened in several stages. I released my second album in full confinement, my tour was canceled and to keep this record alive a little anyway, I decided to translate one of my songs, Forget My Blueswhich became It’s all, it’s nothing. It was my first song in French. I’ve wanted to do it for a long time, but I didn’t think I could do it. It was also the beginning of my collaboration with [le réalisateur] Marc-André Gilbert. I then wanted to make a record in French with him.
Your previous two albums were in English. Have you felt a big difference in the way you create, in your approach to writing?
It’s getting easier, because I know myself better and better, but it’s still much more difficult than in English for me to make the words sound good. I learned that what worked best for me were simple words. […] Often, my first ideas, I make yogurt, I say anything and they are often words in English. Then, I’m going to use the sounds that I liked in English and find words that sound a bit similar in French.
Dans quel contexte t’es-tu mis à l’écriture de ces chansons ?
Je suis parti en tournage en Grèce pour deux projets différents. J’ai tourné le film Music, de la réalisatrice Angela Schanelec. Ça a été mon premier voyage, pendant deux mois, durant lequel plusieurs chansons sont nées là-bas. Je suis rentré à Montréal et on a travaillé sur ces ébauches. Un thème s’est dessiné parce que je savais déjà que je repartais pour six mois en Grèce [pour le tournage de la série Salade grecque, de Cédric Klapisch], that I was going to be far from my girlfriend and the people I love. I had felt the energy of Greece, I couldn’t wait to go back, but I was a little dreading what it meant for my relationship, being away for so long. I was very moved by that and it was felt in the compositions.
Was writing a channel for all these emotions, during these months in Greece, far from your life?
It helped me a lot to calm my anxieties and my questions. I don’t claim to have found any answers, but my songs were a way of expressing all of that. It felt good. That’s the main theme, the main songs are on that.
How do you combine this daily life as an actor with that of a musician? Do both parts of you coexist well and even feed each other sometimes?
Yes quite. It makes me feel good to have both, because I feel like, in either one, I lose the passion side, when it becomes the only thing you do and it just becomes a work. When I’m in Greece filming and I have a free hour when I get home, I pick up my guitar and make music. At that moment, she takes back the place she had when I was a teenager. It allows me to return to myself.
In terms of the sounds of this album, what direction did you want to take?
We settled on the guitar, which we wanted to be very dry. I gave myself the gift of an old Martin from 1949 that we used on the album without putting [d’effet]. With my voice, we wanted it to be very warm. We wanted to feel Greece, to feel the fact that this album is a photo of this period of my life. We did a huge amount of work with the harmonies. We wanted to use the voices almost like violins, to be like a choir. All of that really formed the identity of the album.
What contribution did Marc-André Gilbert make to your creative process?
He pushed me a lot. If I’m lazy, and I feel like we’ve done the right thing on a song, but he feels like something’s missing, he’ll push me to my limits and that really led to the project further. I was also afraid of co-writing, I refused it, telling myself that I had done 100% of the writing for the first two albums. But in fact, it really made me go further, because it pushed me to go further within myself.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
Alyosha Schneider
Your lover, Charlotte [Cardin]has a co-writing credit on the song The ocean of lovers. We also hear her on several songs, where she does harmonies. Tell me about this collaboration.
She managed to find the right wording for a sentence on The ocean of lovers. His presence on the album is not an official collaboration. But we live together and she was in the studio sometimes singing. I didn’t want Charlotte Cardin to sing on my record, I wanted my girlfriend to sing on my record. We also hear from friends of mine from Greece. I wanted these people in my life to sing on the album.
A song, Mexico, the last one on the disc, is in English. Why did you decide to include it on this album?
This song happened in a special way. I wrote it even before the second album, it’s much older, that’s why it’s in English. Marc-André showed me a slightly bossa nova tune he was working on and it made me think of this song. It had the same slightly insular side as the other pieces.
How do you feel, a few days before presenting this third album?
I’m excited and curious to see how this will be received. It’s no longer in my hands, I can only cross my fingers, I hope it reaches people. But with the release of the singles, I already have the impression that, perhaps because of the French, the reception is already better than the experience I had with the first albums.
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Alyosha Schneider
Alyosha Schneider
Audiogram
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