Where to start ? Guillaume Bordel is hard to pin down. The beginning first: he is releasing his first complete album this Friday, childflower. He will even present it this Friday evening on the first day of the Francos de Montréal, on a free outdoor stage. And speaking with him is both a pleasure and an adventure, just like his album.
“Excuse me, there, but I’m going to get up to tell you this. This is the third time that Guillaume Bordel has stood next to the picnic table in the park to gain amplitude in his explanations. In his brown jacket which covers an embroidered white shirt, he puts on quite a show for the squirrels and the journalist. And we haven’t talked about her bowl-cut hair, dyed orange — “a color my mom loves.”
The 34-year-old musician is anything but beige. He is passionate about TV productions — “I made a little EP about the show Living memories » — and humor — « in my references, among others for the photos, there was the Denis Drolet ». All this is distilled in a certain way in his creation, the one that we can see and hear on childflower.
Throughout the 12 songs, Guillaume Bordel plunges his pen into his flaws and his memories, often into both at the same time. But overall he avoids misery, swapping tears for witticisms, not without extending here and there a layer of happiness resembling a dose of Polysporin. And in addition, he layers his lyrics on a catchy rock song with yé-yé accents, highlighted by director Dany Placard.
“I wanted a record written from the heart, you know? Something that came out of my guts more than my head, let’s say, ”explains the native of Hérouxville and self-taught musician, formed by learned analysis of Kurt Cobain’s finger positions on his guitar on the YouTube videos of the album MTV Unplugged. “I wrote it like a rapper doing freestyle, but with a guitar. The themes, or at least the key phrases came out like that, then after I tweaked. »
It is the notion of simplicity that guided him in his compositions. For him, “a very H ADHD and not on pills”, it was a challenge. But for his desire to tint his music with yé-yé fibers to hold up, it was a must in his eyes. “I couldn’t have written like Laurence-Anne or Klô Pelgag for example”, but he tried to go “just the little way next door” to normality. This gives lines like “Of all the times I fell in bicycle / Today I drive without hands” (two milligrams) or “In my minivanI listen to Donovan in the Walmart parking lot” (Minivan).
Some approaches echo Jérôme 50 or Philémon Cimon, even The Band or even a Pierre Lalonde, well. “Pierre Lalonde, it’s almost embarrassing to say, but I’m a fan,” says Guillaume Bordel, a graduate of the National School of Song. Not for the texts, I find it a little disgusting this era of charmers for whom it’s “come here I am going to kiss you by force”. But I was studying the vocal melodies a lot versus the music, and what that brings to the attitude. You get into the game, you know: it’s a bit lazy, then I am too. »
I wanted a record written from the heart, you know? Something that came out of my guts more than my head, let’s say.
Bordel describes himself as a musical sponge, and is an admirer of what he calls “old Quebec”, quoting in the course of the discussion Charlebois and Ferland, whose use of keyboards he admires on the album YELLOW. He has just bought a used guitar “like the one Claude Dubois had in the 1970s”. He also listened a lot to the latest Hay Babies album – Laura Sauvage will be in his group at the Francos – and at the moment he admitted to being soaked in certain pieces by Elton John.
childflowera title also used as a logo for its visual, was recorded “à la Get Back before the broadcast of the documentary” on the Beatles, that is to say in collegiality, together in the same room. A few acoustic screens separated the musicians, but everyone could look each other in the eye.
It was entirely consistent with Guillaume Bordel’s ambition for this record: to put on shows. Already composing with his guitar, in front of his microphone, “I closed my eyes, I imagined where I wanted to play this album. I saw myself more at summer festivals, I was thinking of the Poutine Festival in Drummondville, with a lot of people. »
At the Francos this Friday at 7 p.m., he plans to spend a good part of his hour without a guitar, a way of “throwing himself a little into the void”. “I will compensate by dancing! he says. Guillaume Bordel tried to contain himself on record, he will let loose on stage.