escape the night is surprisingly soft, with a soothing tone even, considering what the musicians have been through since releasing their previous album three years ago. Projected ahead of the #MeToo wave, which swept the Quebec cultural milieu in July 2020, the Boulay sisters had promptly announced that they wanted to sever their business ties with their record company, Dare to Care, whose management and one of its performers were subject to allegations of misconduct. Between this and the fury engendered by social networks, the Boulays would have been right to sing their anger and their indignation, which are not read more than they are heard on this soft pop-oriented album.
“All of that is behind us,” says Stéphanie today. This summer of 2020 was difficult to live through, “very confusing”, in particular through the lucid observation that they were victims, but also tacitly accomplices, of what was going on behind the scenes, an idea expressed with nuance in the text of the song. you kept silent.
“Behind the desire to broach the subject, we had this desire to change our point of view, explains Stéphanie. Because quickly, we were very radical in this movement because we felt the need to point fingers. We were angry, sharp in our words, intransigent, without nuance. The bad guys on one side, the good guys on the other. [Avec la chanson T’as gardé le silence], we just wanted to have a little compassion and benevolence towards everyone. »
The storm passed, “we had to cling to what we still like, what is beautiful in this profession that we have chosen and that we want to do all our lives”. Mélanie continues: “We’ve been wondering about several aspects of this job for a long time; the whole showbiz side, for us, it’s not… ” The sentence will remain in suspense, but we have understood the idea which crosses the rhymes of I will make you dance : “I won’t tell you / That honors and splinters are so little for me / That sometimes when I’m loved, it’s neither hot nor cold. »
The theme of the reverse of fame has been sung elsewhere, recently by Lana del Rey, Lorde or even Billie Eilish, the sisters’ avowed influence as regards also the more synthetic color of certain songs on the album, such as The lights in the sky. “Billie Eilish has this song where she says something like, ‘It’s funny how the only people who love me are the ones who don’t know me.’ Mélanie jumps: “My God! Ouch ! Stéphanie continues: “It struck me: she is 18 and gives herself the right to say that; that means I can say business as well. We are always on the fine line between what we want to say and what we want to keep to ourselves — to what extent do we reveal ourselves, to what extent do we use our experience to write “tunes”? »
The trap
The first excerpt fromescape the night is called I will make you dance, a title that reminds us that Mélanie and Stéphanie are also capable of self-mockery. Because, let’s be honest, if there’s one thing their songs don’t make us want to do, it’s dancing.
” It’s exactly that ! they exclaim in chorus, momentarily disturbing the tranquility of the cafe where they had arranged to meet us. “That’s also why we put it at the beginning of the album”, underlines Stéphanie, who speaks here of an “effect Don’t listen to this », in reference to the title song of Jean-Pierre Ferland’s album (1995). “I like that, it seems, to lead people on a boat, a little, by making a little joke. It’s like setting people off on the wrong track to catch them somewhere else. »
Mélanie continues: “We have received a lot of comments in recent years saying that we are crying all the time. When we open up about personal and ‘vulnerable’ things, we are seen as depressing, but on the other hand, people like us because we are authentic and real. What exactly do you want? That’s kind of what the song says: ‘OK, you don’t want to hear the truth, so we’re gonna make you dance.’” They almost get there, but only on the song The lights in the sky, the most pop and modern, the one that seals, in a way, the collaboration with director Connor Seidel, the one who co-piloted the aesthetic shift, from folk song to more sophisticated pop, initiated on the previous album. The rhythm is sustained, borderline dance, in tune with the times, and what do we hear there in the chorus? A vocoder to tamper with your vocals? “Yeah… we went there!” Stéphanie is still surprised. “There are some on Bon Iver sometimes, and on Apple’s latest album too. That was also our buzz, adding sound elements that we had never dared to integrate before”, like this synth in intro of the solemn you kept silent.
To bring us together
“We want to make people want to sing along and get together again,” says Stéphanie. Before, this desire passed a lot through our guitars, their friendly side. [Sur le nouvel album], the sound aesthetic is smoother, more sophisticated. Curiously, we were told that in parallel, we never went so much to the heart of the subjects, by naming things, without detour, without metaphors. Unconsciously, we wanted to be more honest than ever in our songs, but embellishing the music. »
The personal and the vulnerable come back at a gallop in this album which recounts in the background what Mélanie and Stéphanie have been through since The death of the stars, published in the fall of 2019, so shortly before the start of the pandemic. Which is never mentioned in their new songs, Stephanie admitting to having had enough of the subject which forced them to cancel half of the show dates planned for their last tour.
“The pandemic, it slipped on my back like water on the feathers of a duck”, admits Mélanie, who has given birth twice since. “We have experienced so many upheavals in our lives that the pandemic has taken a back seat” Stéphanie, who gave birth to a new story, the animalpublished by Québec Amérique, even affirms that it did him good “to [se] hide the face. I took refuge in the countryside — I was supposed to stay there part-time, I ended up moving there. I “reconnected” with nature, that was my pandemic”.
“We’ve never had lives so different from each other,” says Stéphanie, under the approving gaze of Mélanie. The first lives today in the countryside with her spouse and his children, in shared custody, the second in the suburbs with the two children she had during the pandemic, a situation which inspired her to write the text of Not his motheron the delicate and little-discussed theme (in song as elsewhere) of “step-parenting”.