We would have wished Pomme a good Christmas holiday if only she knew how to enjoy it. She agreed to it last May, but “this little break was not easy for [elle] », she confides to Duty. “I have trouble clearing my mind, stopping for more than a few days, that’s why I do so many things. » Like giving concerts, playing the leading role in a feature film called The Silver Venus and launch a new album, Seasonsborn precisely during this vacation attempt, in Montreal.
Legend has it that Mel Tormé and Robert Wells composed the immortelle in the middle of July The Christmas Song (“ Chestnuts roasting on an open fire / Jack Frost nipping at your nose “, cooed the great Nat King Cole, who popularized it in 1946), to try to put the heatwave that was raging at the time out of their minds. With this same desire to be elsewhere for the time of a song, Claire Pommet composed Christmas cardone of the movements from his album Seasonslast March, during a brief creative residency at the Château de la Haute Borde, in the heart of the Loire Valley.
A little, we guess, to immerse herself in the Christmases here, which she loves so much. “I haven’t spent Christmas with my family for a few years because I like being in Montreal,” admits the singer-songwriter. I prefer being here, in the snow, and that’s a topic of discussion: when you don’t celebrate Christmas with the family, it can be hurtful for them. “And then, although our winters are less rigorous than in the past, they seem more “spectacular” to him than in his native France, “where the seasons have their charms, of course, but the contrasts between the seasons in Quebec are more striking. It’s more inspiring to create an album about the seasons after having experienced them in Quebec.”
Like the autumn movement (and those of spring and summer which will be revealed next March), the magnificent winter movement is divided into three portions for as many months of the season. The refrain of the month of December blends into the other two months, these more orchestral, a choir and a saxophone blowing into Pomme’s neck: “ To Montreal,the sky is cold / I know you don’t won’t answer / I saw our friendship / Like a refuge after the summer », she sings softly.
” In this Christmas card, explains Pomme, there is this idea that it is a beautiful celebration, which forces us a little to be happy and to buy lots of things. There is also this relationship to capitalism and overconsumption. I sing Merry Christmas, but basically, I’m saying hypersad things by introducing the end of a friendship – a relationship, romantic or friendly, we don’t really know, but in a sugar-coated song. »
“That’s a lot like Christmas,” continues the musician. The idea of being happy while at the same time there are plenty of people who are alone, or who don’t get along well with their families, those who don’t have money, those who find themselves in hellish dinners to make you feel out of place. The first part of the movement is magical, but the rest is a way of responding to this false image we have of a perfect Christmas like in the advertisements, with Santa Claus who doesn’t really exist. »
From one season to another
“Having a busy schedule becomes like a mechanism to deal with my anxiety,” says Claire. I don’t know how to deal with emptiness on a daily basis. » This daily emptiness felt in Montreal last May, she filled it with new songs. Christmas card was already written, “then I had the idea of writing about the seasons, because I felt uninspired anyway by the usual things I write about, my emotions, my anxiety, what goes through me . I felt a little drained having dealt with these subjects a lot over two albums,” Loopholes (2019) and the recent Consolation (2022). “I think I had reached the end of this process, which had become like a mechanism, a habit which really reassured me in the conception of an album. »
The seasons, then. The eternal cycle of starting again. Spring, summer, autumn, winter, the turning wheel, “which surpasses us, nature, the immutable. Relying on something greater, which exceeds us, which is immutable, nature. No longer write, for once, about my questions about life, but write about what is happening, regardless of whether I feel good or not. » As Vivaldi did, evokes the musician, trained in music theory and the cello, who here reconnects with her classical roots, also citing the influence of Carnival of the Animals (1886) by Saint-Saëns and the film’s soundtrack Bambi (1942), composed by Frank Churchill and Edward H. Plumb.
His good friend Malvina Meinier, composer, arranger and conductor, wrote some of the more “dashing” music for the spring and fall movements, which will be released next March. This new album was born from their work on three performances that Pomme offered, in Paris and Brussels, with an orchestra of 16 musicians. “I thought it was a bit of a shame to put together such an orchestra just for three concerts, so we might as well make use of it. » For a studio project, on which it is no longer the only center of attraction, rather highlighting the work of its orchestrators and directors. “When I work with Malvina, I always want to see things bigger,” comments Claire.
Flavien Berger, co-director ofConsolation, took charge of the fall, while the illustrious Aaron Dessner of the group The National is directing the winter sequel. It was the American who made contact with Apple, through social networks. ” Good morning ! I love your music, do you want to work together? » said the message. She doesn’t know precisely how he discovered her music, but she suspects that her brother Bryce, who lives in France, recommended it. “I couldn’t say no; I knew her work, with Bon Iver in particular, and all my friends who were super fans of Taylor Swift had made me listen to her album Folklore (2020), which Dessner co-wrote and directed. “So, during my break last May, I took a bus to join him in Vermont, where he has his studio. »
With all this, Claire Pommet found the time to shoot a film. The first of her career, she who, as a child, dreamed of becoming a film actress. “During the pandemic confinements, I had this kind of impulse, the return of this dream that I had abandoned. I said to myself: “Wow, we’re all going to die soon, I absolutely have to act in a film, otherwise I’m going to regret it!” » Co-written and directed by Héléna Klotz, The Silver Venus (presented at the Toronto International Film Festival a few weeks ago) features Jeanne (Pomme), a young woman determined to make her place in the (very masculine) world of high finance.
“What attracts me to cinema is being someone else, not playing my own role,” explains Claire. So, it wasn’t supposed to take place in the music business, or be the story of a musician. A story of female ambition in finance allowed me to draw parallels with my life and to draw on my own experience to have the legitimacy and material necessary to be able to embody the character. »