Sitting on the bench of a rosepatrien snack bar, coffee in hand, Philippe Brach remembers our last conversation, in the midst of a pandemic. his album The silence of the herds had appeared three years earlier, he had since been discreet, holed up at the end of a row, in the Hautes-Laurentides: “Me, at that time, I thought I would do nothing, ever”, assures you. -he. Read, write, do some directing, work in his community, that, yes, he did. But recording a fourth album? He even claims not to have touched his guitar “for almost three years”. And yet, here we are, dissecting the puzzling The people we love.
Let’s start with the beginning. The album opens with the title track, or more precisely this sentence nonchalantly pronounced by the musician, “The people we love are all going to die”, followed by a sardonic laugh. Talk about an intro!
“I know, concedes Brach. A big squeal of fail from me. I assume. But basically, this sentence was for me filled with light. It was YOLO [« You only live once »], as if to say that we too often realize the value of things when we lose them”, so let’s cherish the people we love before they leave us. ” Rock [Girard, au mixage et à la prise de son] said to me: “Tabarnak is trash as the beginning of an album!” Then systematically, all the other musicians repeated the same thing to me. That’s why I added laughter. I was so proud — I thought this was my brightest album debut! This is so not the case…”
The people we love is short “and dense, it goes in lots of places, it’s hard to digest”, sums up its author. Eleven songs — including a cover of Canada’s national anthem, we’ll come back to that — over about thirty minutes “with a silence of 15 seconds at the end, because I know that the platforms of streaming will swear a pub right after”.
He had promised himself that he would no longer record dark albums like, in his opinion, the three previous ones, and on this point, it is successful: psychedelic and baroque folk song which takes particularly tight rock detours (A bit of magic at the end of side A, the chaotic Revolution (the song) opposite B), other poignant promiscuity. It is the shortest record and above all the least prolific in terms of the lyrics: “The song that has the most words is called Migratory birds and it lasts one minute and thirty-eight seconds,” he notes.
The album has three or four tunes whose text is almost one stanza, but for which I had nevertheless written five or six verses. It all seemed to me to be re-packaging, pick-up-wise. I wanted to be direct.
“The album has three or four tunes whose text is almost a stanza, but for which I had still written five or six verses, says the fanatic. It all seemed like repackaging, picking up. I felt like being direct” and he couldn’t be more so than on the fragile you want to kill yourself which opens side B.
Acoustic guitar arpeggios, string orchestrations (signed Gabriel Desjardins, co-producer of the album with Brach) slip under the melody; it ends with these words: “You want to kill yourself / I love you and understand you / Don’t go away. We recreated the scene, at least its setting, in our minds, with Brach offering words of comfort to a loved one with suicidal thoughts. “It’s not even a tune, not even a poem. It’s a word on a notepad, written eighth note in Sharpie”, illustrates the musician. The person for whom it is intended “didn’t need verses, just needed to hear these sentences. It’s a clear, sharp and precise message, and the subject is so deep that all the words I could have added would have been in vain”.
Revolution
Philippe Brach woke up one morning in December with the intention of entering the studio to record what would become The people we love. “I had a health concern that dampened me for two good months,” he confides, adding in the same breath that he feels in great shape today. “I imposed myself the choice: either I make a record, right now, or I really never make one again. “He called his musicians to summon them to the studio on January 2, but “everyone pissed me off”. The recording began on the 9th and lasted five days; a week later, he was recording the violin tracks in one shift, and bastawe send all that to the vinyl press, reserved even before the first day of recording.
“I don’t really have any perspective yet on this album, recognizes Brach. I realized earlier that it’s the first album that wasn’t written in “I”. Open to the outside, to what surrounds me — not all the time, but more than the previous three. My inspiration is people, so I imagine that’s on the album. »
Brach has spent the past few years doing community work, coordinating workshops at local schools with artists. He savors relative anonymity: “Everyone makes fun of me, no one really knows what I do – they say I’m a singer and that’s it. My neighbors are trappers, I am told things like: “You will tell Sylvain that his skins are ready”, as in the Daughters of Caleb, it’s screwed up. I have seen holes in all regions, but never a place like the one where I stay. It’s another way of thinking and consuming, it appealed to me. And at the community level, everything has to be done here. »
It is with them that he will do the Revolution giving its title to a song on the B side. Irresistible dapper pop chorus boosted jovial violins “Sing me the song / Which burns the churches / The schools and the awnings”, Brach daydreams… before almost drowning – literally, his head in a boiler of water. “That was the goal: to write a big pop song that would crash before the end. It’s like dreaming of revolution, then waking up suddenly”. Understand: slogans and demonstrations are all well and good, but gestures, however small, are worth more than fine words.
Revolution (the song) however has another meaning, inseparable from the one that follows:O Canada by Calixa Lavallée, a minimalist and hovering electro version, but transposed into a minor key. Not just an excerpt, the full anthem. ” Revolution is to be taken apart, but followed by theO Canada, it gives another vision of the revolution, says Brach. Doing it again in minor is a way of putting it at half mast. Then interpreting it as if I were a French woman suggests a questioning about identity, which brings me back to the famous tirade of Elvis Gratton. »
“I don’t point, I question things”, then nuances Brach, who still dreams of the country of Quebec. “I am not someone who judges people. You know, working in the community, you take a lot of business. For example, this guy I see at work who didn’t believe in that, he, COVID. But when it came time to distribute Christmas baskets to those in need, he was the only one who got up to do that with me. And there, you say to yourself: OK, there is clearly a communication channel that is opening up. It’s not just an asshole. »