All new, all hot. Burning, even: formed by Jean Divorce and Demi-Lune, the duo DVTR will present Thursday, at Café Cléopâtre, their first microalbum released last Friday and slyly titled GOOD MORNING. Six noisy songs in the (young) egg punk tradition which, according to Jean Divorce, will not change our perception of the world, but will help us a little to face it, fist in the air.
DVTR was born in the most punk way: during a brush evening at Esco, rue Saint-Denis. “We hung out there until 3 a.m. singing songs to each other tunes fictional punk”, recalls, roughly, Jean Divorce, new stage name of Jean-Cimon Tellier, emeritus member of Gazoline and guitarist/keyboardist during the concerts of Le Couleur, in which Laurence Giroux-Do, alias Demi-, sings Moon — of course this name is a reference to Indiana Jones’ young sidekick in the second episode (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom1984).
Comment on race and racism? Even in the acronym of the project: DVTR, Where does your rice come from? “The name was found that evening, at Esco, but I don’t remember why,” Laurence tries to explain, who sheds more light on the racial allusion: “This project makes me feel good because I denied my Vietnamese roots for a long time. I went to a college in the suburbs, full white, Quebecois; I used to tell my teachers all the time: oh, you can cross out the C in my name; Laurence Giroux, that’s quite correct. I am proud of these origins today. Why not [me] use the project to assert myself, while denouncing affairs? »
Because that’s what they do, Demi-Lune and Jean Divorce. They scream over dazzling blasts of punk guitar and lo-fi drum machines (that’s the egg punk brand), between Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, Devo and Jay Reatard. Everyone goes through it: the cops, the patriarchy (Vasectomy) ; the racists, the abusers (Anu Cuni) ; colleagues from the Quebec music scene who invent country groups to be able to appear on the airwaves of SiriusXM and collect money (the song Sound $ex Change).
“Maybe it could become risky to attack everyone like that,” admits Tellier, “but we didn’t think about it that much before doing this project. THE tunes are composed quickly, solely for our own pleasure. We meet in the studio and boom!, that’s what it sounds like. Afterwards, our music does not so much carry a message as it serves to let off steam. »
The duo had barely recorded a handful of songs when the head of the record company Lisbon Lux (with whom Le Couleur works) already offered to publish it. Shortly after, the concert offers arrived – at the FME last September, opening for Les Vulgaires Machins in recent days.
“The comments we receive after our shows are often: Ah, that feels good! It’s direct, it goes straight to the point,” assures Laurence, singing in a register that is the opposite of the one she uses with Le Couleur. “I think it arouses curiosity: wow! It’s Laurence who usually sings like Mylène Farmer with her soft voice! Obviously, I couldn’t sing something like “Vasectomy for all!” with Le Couleur… But when you’ve been doing the same thing in the same group for 13 years, you need to discover yourself differently as a musician. »
Same motivation for his colleague Tellier who, with old friends from Gazoline, will give a final concert on November 24 at the Ritz PDB: “Because we often do brilliant stunts, some thought it was a farce — and that was even the idea originally, to announce the end of the group, then launch a new album the next day… But when we thought about it, we said to ourselves that it could well be the end of Gazoline. As we grew older, our aspirations changed. We thought we had done quite a bit — not so much artistically as in terms of performing and touring. We went and got all the fans we could. »
DVTR will perform on Thursday, at Café Cléopatre, then on December 20, at Esco… at the risk of giving birth to a new musical project with an impossible name whose origin they will still have forgotten.