Étienne Côté has already been seated in front of us for a few minutes. It’s fine, yes, thank you, the weather and whatever it takes to warm up the machine. Then the register is activated, must start well. The red band scrolls, it’s his signal: he puts on his lightly tinted glasses with translucent frames. It is now Lumière who is here, ready to dissect his second disc, whose title suddenly takes on even more meaning: glam.
The musician, heard for ten years with the defunct group Canailles and its very much alive outgrowth Bon Enfant, takes on the air he has on the cover of his album. We see him with his face half in the shadows, his eyes masked by smoked glasses that hide a determined gaze, and his golden curls in the wind.
Who said ” rock star »? In fact, Lumière is — he was able to shine on stage in the opening acts of French star Clara Luciani. glam ? Completely, he who we often see well dressed, his face decorated, like a queer and modern version of Antoine Gratton and his star. And all this is found on this concept disc in which the protagonist leaves the countryside and arrives in town to pursue a career in music – and to conquer the world, more specifically Paris, not without difficulty and without consequences on his life.
“I realized, while trying to break through in France, that this job is really difficult, you inflict things on yourself that are not possible, says Lumière. We’re… we’re nowhere, we’re uprooted all the time, always on the move. “On his first record, he went in search of love, “there, we went on a quest for fame, that of becoming a popular singer. From now on, my character’s quest — or mine — is to burn, to say to oneself: “OK, I am ready to work, I swear to it, I will do everything to try to become popular ”. »
Lumière touched on something very universal with his first record, but he doesn’t believe that his 13 songs about the world of a musician speak less to the public. For him, the meeting point is clear: the career. His echoes ours. “It’s the desire to always have more, that’s what it’s about. Owning success can be transposed to owning wealth, that’s the dream, he explains. It can be “I want to be rich”, “I want to have my company” or “I want my business to roll”, it can be anything, it’s really modeled on a growth model. I think it’s hard to live outside of that. »
Everything that goes up comes down
Success in music, like the stock market or like in business, can grow quickly, but you can lose feathers along the way. The sacrifices are many, even that sometimes the bubbles burst. It’s written and sung from the first lines of the album glam “To become a star / You have to brood […] To live from music / You have to destroy yourself. »
Here, Étienne Côté’s destiny and that of his alter ego become one. “I left friends, I left loves behind, he admits, an eyebrow in the air. I made it a little more fantastic in the album, but I still live it: the only people who call me are people in my rock band. It’s…it’s true. »
Lumière carries the songs on her shoulders, but her musician friends are part of the adventure. “I want to roll towards the sun / Soar in the sky / With my rock band he sings in the aptly titled piece rock band. glam is directed by Alexandre Martel (who worked on the Darlene by Hubert Lenoir), and features several artisans of the Quebec alternative music scene, such as Daphné Brissette (Bon Enfant), Naomie De Lorimier (N Nao) and Eliott Durocher Bundock.
glam is certainly cut into autonomous bites, but is somehow formed by the acts of the same story, not so far from a musical theater, delivered with intensity. Often we think of starmania, whom Lumière admits to having consumed abundantly. The Lumière disc, sometimes rhythmic, sometimes focused on ballads, is in fact imbued with past references. We often think of Charlebois — song in peril is directly rooted in I’ll be back to Montreal — to Elton John, to Queen, and we dive at times into keyboards and guitar lines that the Beatles or the Rolling Stones would not deny.
Performance
The record was made in a hurry, last fall, thanks to the generosity of its musicians. The latter, the creative muscle well warmed up by a summer of touring, devoted several days of their free time to creating with Lumière. “But it feels that we are not in the lace, we are more raw. It’s all the time live :we were looking for performance much more than perfection. »
Lumière’s vocal approach goes hand in hand: it’s “assumed”, he summarizes. “I’m not afraid to exaggerate, even as me, my biggest fear, from the beginning, is that my album is flat. That’s what I said from the start to Alexandre [Martel]. The latter quickly reassured him, and gave him advice: do more than less.
Hence the theatrical side, which Lumière embraces. “I’m interested in this fusion between music and theatre. I don’t think my songs are insufficient on their own, but when I compose them, there is clearly an intention to portray a character, a situation. “Even that the pen of Light regularly offers two facets of the same moment, for example the artist who struggles on the front and who trembles with doubt inside.
The musician quickly bounces back from his first stint in the spotlight at the ADISQ gala in 2021. “That’s really it. It’s champagne, this kind of spectacle, of presenting oneself, while being able to face one’s social anxiety. Then to go for it, to really be there, to feel solid. “This is something totally glamour, according to his definition: “It’s an impression of casual simplicity, but it’s prepared, it’s calculated. And Lumière turned it all into an album. A not “flat” album, moreover.