In 2002, Ariane Moffatt landed like a breath of fresh air in the Quebec musical landscape with her first solo album, Aquanaut. A record of resounding success, but of which the singer-songwriter has long struggled to be proud.
Twenty years later, the singer has finally made peace with the awkwardness of her debut, and even today offers a complete rereading of this unloved first opus with 19 up-and-coming artists, most of whom were barely born in time of publicationAquanaut.
“Of course it’s a first album… But I have a lot of sympathy for the young Ariane who was embarking on a total exploration. All in all, I have tenderness for this album. Looking back, I see that my foundations as an artist were already there: this desire to mix electro and acoustics, to have very personal words, the ambivalence between sad lyrics and happy music… », Arises as Ariane Moffatt, seated at the Croissanterie Figaro, where it all began.
Compelling Demos
It is in this café in Outremont that Michel Bélanger, the co-founder of Audiogram, gives him an appointment to talk about a first album after having been convinced by his demos. Ambitious and a bit cheeky, Ariane Moffatt had previously invited herself to her karate class and took the opportunity to slip a cassette with her first recordings into her kimono, hoping that the leader of the independent record company would eventually listen to them.
The young musician had already been noticed by the community by participating in the tour of Marc Déry. She had also been the singer, at the beginning of the millennium, of Tenzen, a stillborn group with atmospheric sounds, a pure creation of a Guy Cloutier eager to surf the trip-hop wave which was then breaking on the Anglo-Saxon charts. . But for ordinary mortals, Ariane Moffatt was at that time an illustrious stranger, who earned her living as a waitress at the Pizzédélic on Mont-Royal.
Looking back, I see that my foundations as an artist were already there
A job that she will end up giving up to invest herself fully in music. Co-directed by guitarist Joseph Marchand and producer Francis Collard, Aquanaut will therefore see the light of day in the studio fitted out for the occasion in the latter’s apparently, at the corner of Chambord and Gilford.
“We were in a vibes where we discovered Björk. It was very trip hop. We explored new sounds, we experimented. Ari is really one of the first in Quebec to be so involved in all stages of the album,” recalls Joseph Marchand, paying tribute to his great accomplice from his CEGEP days.
angel dust
Aquanaut will be published in June 2002, and will experience an unexpected success, selling some 125,000 copies. On this album with electric sounds and often double-edged lyrics, the ballad angel dust stands out with its very stripped-down arrangements and its lyrics that leave little room for interpretation. Written in just a few hours at Marc Dupré’s studio for a friend who had just had an abortion, the song would become one of his biggest career hits, but Ariane Moffatt had a long love-hate relationship with this piece. .
“There was a certain point in my career when I no longer wanted to do it on show. I didn’t want to be one of those artists who only make the big hits and whose rest of the work we don’t know. But today, I made peace with it. First, because it’s a song that is still relevant with everything that is happening in certain places in the United States, where the right to abortion is threatened. Then, because I hear it, the audience’s sigh of contentment when I start it in show », Explains the one who did not say she was very politicized in 2002, and who did not even define herself as a feminist.
But when she looks a little closer at the texts ofAquanaut, it is clear that she was already unconsciously. The other big hit off the album, focusis ambiguous to say the least and seems at times to evoke a guilty, unavowable desire.
“In your hands I feel so good/So much it hurts/Is this normal? Or is it unhealthy? »
“It surprises everyone when I say that, but it’s a straight tune! I was in an exploratory phase, but I wrote the song with a man in mind. I won’t say more, ”retorts Ariane Moffatt, letting hear the famous nervous laugh that we know her.
Disappointments
This grin has often hidden a great inner pain. By its own admission, the Ariane d’Aquanaut 23 years old was tormented, intense, complexed. Suffering from impostor syndrome after the almost instantaneous success of this first album, the singer-songwriter finds herself completely drained after the tour. So much so that she thinks of going to Mali, backpack, but her meeting with the French singer M will upset her plans at the last minute.
She will follow him to France, where she will find the sacred fire, without ever succeeding in repeating the success she had had in Quebec. France remains one of the rare disappointments in the prolific career of Ariane Moffatt, who says she struggled to meet the standards long imposed by the industry on French singers. Could things have been different if she had performed as planned at the Francofolies de La Rochelle in 2003, at the start of the adventure Aquanaut ? That year, a strike in the entertainment industry disrupted the holding of the festival, which would have given it unique visibility.
A missed appointment that has long been a wound: a wound that has now healed. “At the same time, there were plenty of great professional encounters in France, I was able to go on stage at the Victoires… It’s a great journey all the same. […] And, I always wanted to have an earthly life, a family life, here. I might not have been able to have all that by always having to be in France ”, consoles the one who sings however I want all.
New album
At almost 43 years old, the mother of three children has nothing to be ashamed of. She still enjoys an aura within a whole generation of emerging artists, as evidenced by the project. Aquanaut 2022which brings the now legendary album up to date.
This new disc emanates an astonishing uniformity, when we know that Ariane Moffatt wanted to give carte blanche to each of the artists involved. A few gems certainly stand out, starting with the very pop, almost dance version of White flag by singer Täbï Yösha.
As for the somewhat minimalist interpretation of angel dust of the young Velours Velours, it takes on a very special meaning when we learn that the singer’s mother was pregnant with him when Aquanaut is out.
“It’s with the songs ofAquanaut that I learned to play the guitar,” says Marie Claudel, who takes over In an ocean on the new album. “It’s a sound from the early 2000s. I’m very nostalgic for that sound. It was very avant-garde. Like dream better by Daniel Bélanger, it’s an album that was very significant for me. »
Not so bad for an album whose interpreter still felt a few years ago that it had aged badly. Aquanaut would it actually be a timeless one?