Five years after the great JuniorCorridor resurfaces with the album of broken dreams to rebuild. Mimi, fourth opus of the group and second to be released on the American label Sub Pop, testifies both to the traces left by the pandemic and the desire not to “remake a new Junior 2 », as singer, guitarist and lyricist Jonathan Robert says about this album embodied by the song Die tomorrow and its striking cover showing a close-up of the face of a seemingly dying cat.
It went so well. From the critical success of its first EP, released a little over a decade ago, Corridor offered a rock sound resembling German kosmische and sixties British, capable of putting us in a trance as much as making us want to dance the pogo, a sound that has been refined over the course of albums, Eternal journey (2015) and Supermercado (2017) until Juniorpublished here on Bonsound, but published elsewhere by the legendary label American independent Sub Pop, catalyst for grunge thirty years ago, still relevant today.
“We were arriving at the promised land of rock! » recalls Jonathan Robert, who, solo, presents himself under the name of Jonathan Personne. “We had two great years “booked” from start to finish ahead of us, some great opportunities. But now, we have had the rug pulled out from under us…” His colleague Dominic Berthiaume judges that the word is not yet strong enough: this pandemic was “depressing”, he says. “We said to ourselves: “Finally, we made it !” We should have played festivals in Europe, with Radiohead headlining! It all evaporated. As time passed, these opportunities disappeared. We had to start everything from scratch, but we never thought of pulling the plogue » on Corridor, he assures us.
Jonathan: “We had dreams of grandeur. Eventually, I found myself becoming a dad, blowing leaves in my yard, and learning how to install a toilet. Let’s say it’s a little less rock’n’roll than we hoped. The theme of the album started from there, in a way: disenchantment, disillusionment. »
The guys rolled up their sleeves to launch the difficult project of a fourth album. Their studio, where they rehearse and improvise until the outlines of a song appear, as they did for each album, was closed to access during the confinements. They therefore rented a chalet in the Laurentians to get together and create a temporary semblance of normality.
“We found lots of musical ideas, but no songs,” recalls Dominic. We wanted to continue, because we didn’t yet have enough equipment, but we couldn’t rent chalets every weekend, hence the idea of meeting at Sam’s place [Samuel Gougoux, multi-instrumentiste ayant rejoint le groupe au moment de Junior] to put these bits of ideas together on the computer. » The manufacturing process of Mimi that is, Sam believes. “We weren’t often in our room jamming the amps at full volume. This time, we listened to each other through the speakers next to the computer,” resulting in the softest of Corridor’s albums.
The band’s classic influences are still there, post-punk, the rock of NEU! (on the excellent excerpt Jump Cutamong others), its mechanical rhythm and its grainy guitars, the tangy and retro sounds of Stereolab, deployed on two aesthetically distinct sides, more electro on side A, more simply rock on side B. And the order of the songs on the album has its importance, says Dominic.
“It’s close to our hearts, because making albums is what we love,” he explains. We can talk about the order of the songs for weeks, even before we finish composing the songs. » Several compositions were not selected for this project precisely because they were too rock or similar to the sound of Junior. “On all Corridor albums, we refine the order of the songs. We’ve always worked on our albums like this: yes, we first compose songs, but we imagine them forming a whole, each of them in the right place. »
On side B, we will discover this gem entitled Die tomorrow, the barrage of electric guitars giving way in the verse to a soft and irresistible melody, soaked in melancholy. “I composed this song when I was shopping for life insurance,” confides Jonathan Robert. It’s a little depressing to be faced with this kind of adult responsibility, but at the same time, I found it a little funny. But hey, there I was, having to plan my death. That, and talking about mortgage rates and lots of other “distracting” matters like that during my dinners with friends. The anti-rock wall, I ran into it. »
It’s the song that best embodies the spirit of the album — that one, and the astonishing cover. A funny story, said Jonathan, giggling. “With each album, we have a running gag which is attached to it. While we were making the album, we put our demos on a private Soundcloud page; Dom attached a cat photo to the playlist, and it stuck. » Dominic: “It comes from an Instagram account, @notmyanimal, where silly photos of animals are published, without comments. I put it on just for fun, and we didn’t worry, it would be the cover. »
The title of the album, on the other hand, is the name of Jonathan’s cat, which we imagine looks better than the other. “He’s like that all the time, Snowball!” » said Dominic. Because said cat had to be redrawn: “At first, we wondered if we were just going to take the photo of the cat, but Jo offered to draw it. Except that Sub Pop’s legal affairs department objected: it was necessary to obtain the photographer’s authorization, even for the drawn reproduction. »
Identifying a cat on the Internet must be harder than finding a needle in a haystack, but Sub Pop did the impossible and contacted the feline’s owner who lives in North Carolina. “The lady was thrilled! assures Dominic. She follows us on our social networks and like everything we publish! She tells herself that her cat has become a star thanks to us. We sent him a vinyl copy of the album. The day we pass through North Carolina, we will definitely try to visit him to have a photo taken with the cat. »