Getting involved, wearing flags and buttons, demonstrating and putting your finger (or arm) in the political trap is not without consequences. What we give on one side, we cannot give on the other. Listening to his fifth and brand new album, we see that the very assertive Émile Bilodeau has seen his personal life suffer the repercussions of his positions. Welcome At the bar of hopeswhere the singer opens up to us over 12 beautifully arranged tracks, but recorded not without storms.
“You have to accept the idea of being left by your girlfriend / It’s a possibility when your priority is to change the world”, sings Émile Bilodeau on the organ line of the piece Compromise, perhaps the piece that best encompasses what emerges from the 27-year-old musician’s new pieces. “When I do a demonstration in Rouyn, I’m not listening to Netflix with someone, but it’s a decision,” illustrates the guitarist, met in the offices of his record company, Bravo musique.
In this new musical cocktail, we find an ounce of sadness, two of realism, a zest of humor and a drop or two of a bittersweet mixture of bitterness and hope. And the singer’s lens is therefore turned less towards society than towards his navel, his head and his heart. The menu explores poor communication, the fight against jealousy, excessive love enthusiasm, but also the importance of friends, a certain desire to escape and the idea of having children when everything is going to hell.
In the recent hubbub of his social and political commitment, “I think we were due for a little dose of humanity,” says Émile Bilodeau with a laugh, as talkative as he is lucid. “The last few years have been intense, from a personal point of view. I’m tempted to talk a little about that so that people understand that I don’t always want to talk about injustices. It gives them clues about what happened in my private life,” explains the author of I’m full of it and of How are you.
Initially, Émile Bilodeau wanted to make a double disc, which would have included political pieces, but these have been “shelved” for the moment, laughs the singer, who could well release them later for his diehard fans. But the director ofAt the bar of hopesSimon Kearney, preferred a “shorter and punchier” record, consistent in the roller coaster concept of the title.
Émile Bilodeau has made a lot of headlines in recent years, particularly for his opposition to the law 21, his public disputes with the Parti Québécois and his withdrawal from the Festi-Plage de Cap-d’Espoir due to the lack of female artists in the programming. Without forgetting his contested role as host of the last National Day. So many subjects which have caused a lot of ink to flow among journalists who are “a little sad” and columnists “who sometimes hurt our hearts”, he sings in The Daisys.
“I’m not scratched, but I am a little bit,” he says, bursting out laughing. But “there is surely fatigue,” he admits, mentioning the title River, where he says he wants to go traveling for two years: “I don’t want to turn the page on my wild lands / I just want to see something else, something else. »
At the bar of hopes was recorded at a time when Bilodeau was in the “media noise”, a challenge for the singer-songwriter. In addition, a relative had to leave the recording process “for personal reasons”, and two of his musicians, former colleagues, found themselves in the studio together not without some apprehension. The river aforementioned was long, but not quiet, therefore. “At one point, the musicians and I named it, and we did a bit of human resources. We all talked to each other, we all hugged each other quite a bit, and after that, well, we did our job, says Bilodeau. I find that on the album, you can hear it a little, the omnipresence of the upheaval then [cette idée] to put aside your moments to do something beautiful. »
And there are some things that are beautiful At the bar of hopes, which shows a new musical side of the artist, supervised and accompanied by the promising Simon Kearney. Émile Bilodeau covered his pieces with arrangements here of the piano-bar type, elsewhere close to textured and slightly retro rock. We hear Andy King’s trumpet and also the voices of a choir, Les Voix Ferrées.
“It was really my hobby, the choir, I found that it was a simple way to take the project elsewhere, by adding a different element. There is this idea of strength in numbers. They are omnipresent, but they are still dark. It worked with the concept, notes Bilodeau. It’s my Greek choir, which just underlines the intentions in the tounes. »
And unlike several of his previous records, At the bar of hopes was recorded with the musicians playing together in the studio, an approach advocated by Kearney. The latter also signs a text, Not So Different (Kearn song), which Émile Bilodeau agreed to do — a first for him. “It’s one of my learnings: to be open to proposals,” confides Émile Bilodeau. At another time, I would have refused his song, I would have told myself that it’s my project, my money that I invested to make my own songs. But you know, we have to open our arms more. »