“What vast hypocrisy strikes us / Drenched in useless we will go in row to vote in the void”, chanted Vulgar Machins on The myth of democracy (a myth to be “destroyed”, calls the song), taken from his fifth studio album released in 2010, Requiem for the Deaf. A few days after the last provincial election, the committed punk rock band is back in action with a new album entitled disruption, but let’s put it coldly: not only does democracy still hold, 12 years later, but the world is no better than the band would have liked. What’s the point of continuing to sing then? To fight against disillusion, say Marie-Ève Roy and Guillaume Beauregard.
The couple, in life as on stage, claims to have gone to vote, “but I always nagged at you to get you to go,” Marie-Ève teases, turning to Guillaume. With the result that we know, the status quo, the validation of policies already in place, despite the urgency of the challenges facing us, that of the environmental crisis and that of living together, to begin with.
From the album disruptionlet’s first remember two things, the first being cosmetic: the rock of Vulgaires Machins is less corrosive than before, and not only because the couple have new guitars which, notes Marie-Ève, give “a more clean, without being as clean as that of The Clash”. The second: rather than pointing out the failings of society and those who are the cause of them, as Guillaume and Marie-Ève took pleasure in doing on the group’s five previous albums, the couple evokes without feeling the need to name explicitly. Trump, for example, in the text ofImbecile, a rock closer to a drinking song than a hardcore rant: “They say time is relative / But I don’t really understand it / I’m staring at the sun during the eclipse / I’m a fool. »
Vulgar Machins has changed its tone, concedes Guillaume, “first because a lot of things have already been said, but also because I write what I want to hear. After having bathed in committed rock for twenty years, let’s say that listening to another claiming album, it bores me to death. We drank it, from the anti-capitalist discourse — not that my ideals or my opinions have changed on this subject, but if we want to bring something more to the discourse without having the impression of repeating ourselves, the most interesting avenue in this that concerns me is to write in a more personal way”.
Marie-Ève continues: “I also contributed more to the lyrics”, which considerably changes the thematic perspective of the group, says the musician, focusing on the magnificent one fromBetween grief and blame. Skilfully, delicately, Marie-Ève evokes the relationship we have with the First Nations: “During the pandemic, I discovered [la poétesse] Josephine Bacon. I read, I was touched, straight to the heart. She and her story inspired me a lot; all i learned was the high school history class i never had. I wanted to share this. »
“Either denial or madness”
A feeling is clearly named however, by Marie-Ève in the song until dawn : the desillusion. It’s almost the theme of the album. “We cannot ignore this feeling, justifies Guillaume. I have the impression that many people around us suffer from it. As if the two options left to us today are either denial or madness. »
“For me, this album is the fight against despair and disillusionment, because today I have children,” he continues. And because I have already tried to say to myself:Fuck it, I invest my energy elsewhere even if the world takes a hit.” But I have seen that it is impossible to live like that. We must continue to take responsibility, to get involved, to question ourselves. I do it for my children, I do it to be able to look at myself in the mirror. »
We make music that is good for those who listen to us, and maybe that’s what counts. We will never know the impact we really have, but I have the deep conviction that creation is fundamental. That the arts are fundamental. That all this plays a role in society.
Marie-Ève agrees with this, linking the disillusionment expressed in the album to a form of “social, psychological” combat. There is something comforting in naming suffering, for me it is a way to create empathy, support, which can only lead to something good. We try to make sense of everything we go through, and to develop a sense of community — moreover, that’s what the group brings us, getting together to jammingto make showsto bring people together.
Return
Vulgaires Machins went on hiatus after the tour of Requiem for the Deaf, before returning to the stage in 2019, still supported by Maxime Beauregard’s bass, but with a new master of tempo, Pat Sayers on drums. In the meantime, Guillaume and Marie-Ève have launched solo albums and piloted the reissue of the first albums, collected in a vinyl box set with an extensive biography written by the author and radio craftsman Félix B. Desfossés. The desire to return to the studio, and again with friend Gus Van Go, who had co-produced the previous album and count the dead (2006), sprouted around the same time, during the pandemic.
“We had imposed this rule of not giving concerts unless we had new material to present”, specifies Guillaume. “Except for Rage Against the Machine!” retorts Marie-Ève, recalling that memorable evening on the Plains of Abraham during the last Festival d’été de Québec, when Les Vulgaires opened for the emblematic protest rock group.
Vulgar Machins had then finished its concert with the first extract from disruption, I raise my glass. The song concludes on a note full of hope this album otherwise not jojo, if not on the musical level whereas, from Live in openness, the group brings its rock towards the new wave; on OK, again sung by Marie-Ève, who embodies half of the songs on the album, the group even holds what looks most like a radio hit, the synths coating the epic chorus, the chord progression making us rise in the adrenaline of this call for help to escape the disenchantment of the world: “I want to leave the carousel / And start over from scratch / I think I would rather lose everything / Than be part of the decoration. »
Guillaume: “I strongly defended the idea of leaving [Je lève mon verre] as first singleprecisely so as not to give a first impression of a band still in tabarnak. Because, unlike the old albums, this is not an angry album. It is rather an album of search for direction, of questioning and of desire to go towards the other. »
Questions
This record, adds Marie-Ève, “represents the kind of questions we asked ourselves [ces deux dernières années] and the observations that we make” of the state of the world, which Guillaume observes in particular through the lens of new technologies, questioning himself on their real benefits on society — the title of the album refers to the work In disruption, chow not to go crazy ?co-signed by the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, whose thought “has as much importance on this new album as that of Albert Jacquard on the first of the Vulgar ones”, specifies the singer.
“What I draw from the experience of the Vulgars of the past is that we are still part of the solution, in the sense that I think we are bringing something positive”, says Guillaume Beauregard to justify the return of the group founded in 1995 and which has established itself as one of the most committed voices in the history of Quebec rock. “We make music that is good for those who listen to us, and maybe that’s what counts. We will never know the impact we really have, but I have the deep conviction that creation is fundamental. That the arts are fundamental. That all this plays a role in society. »