It’s the turn of Coup de cœur francophone to taste the delights of deconfinement: until November 14, the venerable festival takes over a dozen rooms in the metropolis at a time when French-speaking artists from here flood our eardrums with new projects. This is the case of Julia Daigle, co-founder of the electro-pop duo Paupières, which will be released on Friday A monkey on the shoulder, a first solo album with incredible sounds on the French-speaking pop scene.
Julia wanted her collaborator and co-director Dominic Vanchesteing to participate in the interview. “It’s our project together, after all,” says the singer-songwriter, also insisting on the contribution of the musicians who played on her first album. In the other window of our videoconference, Dominic nuances: “Okay, but without Julia, this project would not exist. “
The distinctive features that led him to want to collaborate with her are her hushed voice, her poetry “without any form of cliché, emotions evoked, suggested, in filigree”, affirms Dominic. And it is his journey, not simple, of the last years sublimated in his texts.
“Without going into my privacy, let’s say that I experienced a certain form of confinement before confinement, will limit herself to say Julia. During these difficult years, music was for me more than an escape. It allowed me to get my head out of the water, so to speak. “
We will not know more, which adds to the mystery of this extraordinary record. Julia and Dominic started working on it five years ago, after having had a few beers together. “I wanted to explore something else. I was told Dominic would be the right person to make it happen. »He is a mutual friend, the lascivious crooner Bernardino Femminielli, who served as an intermediary, Dominic having achieved his formidable American pleasures (2016), “an album which, to this day, is among my tops [faits au Québec] », Says Julia. Most of the musicians who gave life to this Femminielli album are once again gathered for A monkey on the shoulder.
Unqualifiable object
We also recognize a musical kinship, especially in terms of rhythm. This dry sound, this precise and tense drum playing of Guillaume Éthier which refers to that of the albums Seen from the outside (1973) and The cabbage-headed man (1976) by Gainsbourg. There where A monkey on the shoulder stands out, it is by its color, its studied sounds, this strange alloy of synthesizers and atypical stringed instruments, those of the mandolin, the bouzouki, the banjo and the saz (a lute of Persian origin) that make unspeakable Julia’s song.
Julia got the flash. “It seems to me that I hear something medieval! It became the starting point for the conversation around the album, it defined the aesthetic of the project. Dominic agrees that listening toA monkey on the shoulder, the initiated will not really recognize the old music, but this choice “flowed like obvious, in addition to adding something unique to the project”, which will evoke the sounds of certain albums of Dead Can Dance, the harmonic volatility of ‘Enya and Kate Bush, with a touch of prog in the song structures. “It was an apprenticeship for me to have to unlearn the very pop style of composing songs like I do with Paupières,” says Julia.
In addition, certain constraints have been set. “Expressly avoid electric guitars and analog synths, which we have heard far too much for ten years, says Dominic. OK, okay, the Juno-60, we know how it sounds. There is a fatigue that sets in. Julia bought a specific model of Kurzweil synthesizer for this album. It’s almost a joke, because the instrument has thousands of presets [sons préenregistrés], but, whichever one you choose, it’s gonna sound like a 1990’s movie soundtrack. This synth was our main box of crayons. “
It was for me an apprenticeship to have to unlearn the very pop way of composing songs like I do with Paupières
“I have the impression that, in spite of us, something very ‘Quebecois’ arose from this album, and it delighted us all”, believes Dominic, who introduced Julia to the work of the prog-rock group. Contraction.
“From recording session to recording session, there was definitely something that evoked a kind of fantasized, mythological Quebec”, literally awakened in the song Nanette, kind of homage to Mme Workman, whom Julia and Dominic admire.
“Dominic had read her biography and a passage had inspired him, this time when she lived in New York and where she was experiencing a heartbreak, says Julia. This song, I found it touching – it’s a love song, and I don’t really write love songs. “