Cultural Back to School | The Essential Minimalism of Avec pas d’casque

It’s the return we weren’t expecting and one of the very good news of the new school year: after eight years of absence, Avec pas d’casque will launch a new album next Friday, Cardinalin addition to going back on tour.

“We never said it was over!” says the band’s songwriter, Stéphane Lafleur, during an interview where the four musician friends are reunited. Indeed, they tell him, but it was a long enough hiatus that we thought the band had disbanded without making a big announcement, and that we greet this sixth album with as much astonishment as delight.

“It’s long, but it goes by quickly,” says the filmmaker-singer, who recalls that during this period he made a film, Viking, released in 2022. In fact, the four members of the band have been very busy. Drummer Joël Vaudreuil directed the animated film Adam is slowly changing, released in June 2024, with bassist Nicolas Moussette as the lead animator. As for the keyboardist and producer of the album Mathieu Charbonneau, he has composed film music, including that of Viking and of The goddess of fireflies.

“Think that after the release of the last album in 2016, we toured for a year and a half, and that we’ve been working on this one for a year… there’s not much left,” analyzes Stéphane Lafleur. “For the public, it seemed longer than for us.”

It was during impromptu shows they gave in Gaspésie that the desire to make an album really came back to them. They looked at their schedules, organized studio time, and it didn’t take long to find their “dynamic of pleasure” again, in “the simplicity of music and friendship.”

“When we have a period where we work a lot, we seem to instinctively need to find ourselves again, to experience a little more creative freedom,” emphasizes Joël Vaudreuil, who founded the group with Stéphane Lafleur 22 years ago.

“The group is a hobby that became something more official over time,” says Stéphane Lafleur. And it gradually grew, with the arrival of Nicolas Moussette in 2006, then Mathieu Charbonneau in 2012, when their big album, Astronomy.

“You know it’s changed when, all of a sudden, it’s not just your friends who come to see your shows!” laughs Stéphane Lafleur. “We don’t do TV, we’re a band that relies a lot on word of mouth. We’ve had a pretty slow progression.”

“We’re not the most active on social media either,” adds Joël Vaudreuil. Mathieu Charbonneau agrees. “It’s a job we decided not to do. And it seems to be working for us.”

“I’ve had a cell phone for two weeks now,” the least talkative member of the group, Nicolas Moussette, would later confide.

Sincerity

Eight years later, the group has kept its discreet and artisanal way of doing things. The shows sell out without them having to do big advertising campaigns, and they will take place mainly in small venues. “It’s a choice we defended,” says Mathieu.

“These are a lot of venues that operate in cooperative mode and the relationship with people is different,” explains Stéphane. “It seems like the way they manage their venue is like the way we manage our band.”

With Cardinalthe musicians of Avec pas d’casque picked up where they left off. “It’s the logical next step,” explains Joël. “There’s no 180-degree turn, we continue, but with the baggage we have.” We thus find in these ten songs the vaporous country-folk and the slowness that characterize them.

“I had stated from the beginning my desire for the album to be very homogeneous, that it could be listened to from one end to the other as if it were a long song,” adds Stéphane Lafleur. “We wanted something calm, soothing.”

Stéphane Lafleur is still, of course, writing the songs. The three other musicians are aware of how lucky they are to work with a songwriter of this caliber, with such poignant poetry.

“Every day!” Mathieu exclaims. “We’re often the first to hear the songs. He records them with his guitar in his kitchen, then he sends them to us by email, and then… we start yelling.”

“The album we would listen to would be the one with the demos that Stéphane sends us,” adds Joël.

Over the years, Stéphane Lafleur’s writing has become even more refined: more direct, more concise, it gets even more to the point. “I try to be more simple, to synthesize my thoughts, to purify them,” he confirms. “There was more fuss before.”

Thanks to the beauty of the envelope created with his musician friends, the author feels less obliged to “furnish” with words. “The songs breathe more.” This mutual trust allows him to explore more serious avenues, and to avoid “hamming it up.”

“It’s more interesting as a composer to go towards sincerity. To get a little wet.” He pauses, raises his voice (a little).

Changes

In eight years, the music industry has changed completely, musicians note. “We looked at the media coverage ofAstronomyit made us a little sad to see the amount of media that covered music in 2012 compared to today,” illustrates Stéphane Lafleur.

In 2024, the challenge is twofold, he believes: you have to stand out from the mass of music available, and find a way to reach people. The luck of the musicians of Avec pas d’casque is to arrive with notoriety and fervent fans, “a readership,” he says. And they are both grateful and relieved for it.

“I think so,” Stéphane replies. “And we’re starting to reach the children of our first fans. We’ve lasted long enough to reap what we sowed 22 years ago!”

Avec pas d’casque began its tour last weekend at the Festival de la musique émergente in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. Unsurprisingly, the musicians travel with minimal organization: all together in the same truck, in addition to bassist-guitarist Simon Trottier, without a technical team, except for a sound engineer when they play in larger venues.

“We do everything ourselves,” says Stéphane. “It’s kind of the only way to make it as a band, to keep the tickets at a reasonable price. And everyone has their specialty: Mathieu finds a good restaurant, I predict how long it will take to get there, Joël drives, Nicolas loads the truck.”

And what’s next? “We don’t know. Everyone has projects. I don’t think it’s going to be eight years before we do another one, but we don’t know.”

Nicolas speaks again, seriously. “I would do it more often than every eight years.”

Country folk

Cardinal

With no helmet

Bravo Musique (on sale September 13)