Posted at 5:00 p.m.
“To choose is to give up”, launches Peter Peter, quoting André Gide.
After eight years living in Paris, the singer-songwriter moved back to Montreal last year after several hesitations. While he was planning to live in Lille – “I had a lease in my hands, but I was getting information at the same time to send my things by boat” – a “mortgage pre-authorization” came to change the situation.
“I think I wanted to come back to Montreal before it was too late,” explains Peter Peter.
Does he feel at home here? “I have more the impression of having left somewhere, rather than having returned, answers the author of the song procrastinate. But what is going home? »
In fact, Peter Peter, who was born in Chicoutimi and grew up in Quebec, is still in a sort of eternal exile.
I live so much in my head that I could live anywhere. I have a bubble of loneliness around me. I will always drag my shell as an only child and I will always find my home.
Peter-Peter
That’s why Peter Peter says he always feels a bit out of step and in observation mode. This feeling, he illustrated it marvelously in many songs of his discography. quote great comedy, It’s a season without the passing of time or his fairly recent excerpt Rome.
” A real live »
Peter Peter launched the excellent album great comedy in September 2020. Like many artists, he was unable to go on tour as planned. “It was an album that I was seeing for a big show, which was very bad timing.. »
In order not to slow down his momentum too much, the artist and his record company Audiogram had the idea of making an album live with six songs from his repertoire. The whole thing was supposed to be recorded in Paris, but it was finally done in Montreal, at the legendary Hotel2Tango studio, hence the title H2T live session.
As long as you come back to live in Montreal, why not go to the symbolic place where Peter Peter recorded his first album, as Arcade Fire had done before him? “I wanted a real live with a sequence shot,” says Peter Peter, who teamed up with director Dominic Vanchesteing.
The artist chose songs that he still had a lot of fun playing and that are not necessarily his best known (Tergiverse, Carousel) nor its more electronics (An improved version of sadness).
Finding Peter Peter in guitar and voice mode brings out his great talent as a melodist. Returning to the essence of his compositions, a song like Little Shangri-La is less cold than the original. “It looks like my first demos,” he rejoices.
Otherwise, we find the song mana play that Peter Peter wrote around the age of 25, while he was wandering the streets of his neighborhood at the time, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.
“Wandering is still my way of life,” emphasizes the man who runs several times a week on Mount Royal.
The other three songs H2T live session are Baroque beauty, Common now and The bride and groom have disappeared. The first recounts the declaration of an impossible love in the heart of Chinatown, while the second laments seduction in the days of Instagram. On The bride and groom disappeared Peter-Peter reflects on the withering love and the loss of rituals.
You will have understood that the musician has a unique pen, that he cherishes what is true, that he avoids pretense and that he tames his vulnerabilities instead of driving them away, hence the idea of a session live without artifice and without editing.
To the Francos
Peter Peter was not thinking of doing a show this summer, he says, but he changed his mind when Laurent Saulnier, head of programming at Spectra, wrote to him on Facebook: “Do you want to play at the Francos? »
The artist had mourned a presentation of his album great comedy in Quebec, but it was an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Peter Peter not only agreed to perform in the hall that was called L’Astral for a long time, but he also decided to put all his effort into it. On stage, he will find drummer Francis Mineau, guitarist Jason Kent, keyboardist Guillaume Guilbault and multi-instrumentalist Nicola Ormiston. Even saxophonist Jonathan Orland will be present for the occasion.
We rehearse as if we were going on tour.
Peter Peter, about the show he will present at the Francos
Nothing can be announced yet, but Peter Peter should nevertheless give other shows during the summer, in particular in solo.
Otherwise, know that the studio he set up at his home in Montreal is bearing fruit. Peter Peter has not one, but two albums in demo form. A first guitar-voice and another electro dance music. “They’re fighting each other, and we’ll see which one comes out first. »
“Choosing is giving up”, said Peter Peter.