Camille Poliquin, aka Kroy, carries within her a strong duality between her dark and almost disturbing side, which she highlights a lot in her online presences, and her luminous side, which jumps out at us as soon as she welcomes us. In her ample black clothes, with her ebony hair, she has sparkling eyes and an abundant smile, often accompanied by a contagious laugh. This is a paradox that illuminates her new album well, Militiaa first solo in… eight years.
The artist, also known as one half of the duo Milk & Bone, is emerging from her “dormancy” and launching a collection of 12 songs in English on Friday, cradled by this approach to chiaroscuro. Kroy sings lyrics that shatter romantic disappointments and the emotional pile-ups that follow. But for several of these catchy electro-pop tracks, she has chosen a scintillating, fun, major-key coating, even diving into hyperpop — an approach that pushes the codes of pop to the limit.
This contrast, “that’s very ‘me’!” she says, laughing, her gaze almost mischievous. The lyrics, first. She puts everything into it and she assumes this kind of violence. “It’s like a way of validating how I feel. I feel emotions a lot. It seems that for me, the only way to honor how I feel a certain way is to go into hyperbole and for the image to express that to be at the total extreme.”
This is perhaps what makes these pieces his and not part of Milk&Bone’s repertoire. “One of the things that really makes the difference is the lexical field between the two projects. My lexical field is quite a bit more graphic, let’s say – and perhaps more depressive than the one we share, Laurence and I [Lafond-Beaulne]. »
She gives the example of Twelve Wheeler Truckthe last piece of Militiawhere she sings ” We’re no longer us / You left me to die of cold outside ». “I really feel like that. Like I was left outside to die in the cold. No coat, no nothing,” Kroy says. “And ideally, there are people who will feel accompanied in art as well.” In the same way, she adds, she moves through life with the work of her idol, the artist Mitski.
What is special about Militiais that it is composed of pieces written not in one piece, but rather of titles born over the last 10 years of the 32-year-old musician’s life. Several different stories rub shoulders, therefore, but sadly lead to the same results. Camille is racking her brains. “I realize that I trust a lot. Sometimes, yes, I tell myself that I’m lucky, because that means that I grew up in an environment where I was given reason to trust. But after that, I get taken advantage of. And I experience it as a betrayal.”
And also, despite the emotional experience gained, she realizes here “that it doesn’t change.” “I don’t learn. I make the same mistakes and I react in the same way. It seems like it’s like bittersweet“It reassures me to know that I am truly me,” she explains. “But I don’t want to navigate in a world where I have to question everything, where I have to be on my guard all the time.”
For a record created over such a long period of time, Militia is surprisingly coherent in its textures and energy. “I didn’t create all the pieces, but I did the musical direction for all the pieces,” explains Camille Poliquin.
This second album by Kroy still evolves in waves, from light pieces where the guitar plays — “I still released five years with a guitarist!” — to very dense titles, like Saltwater And Defenderwhich seem to be taken from the repertoire of pop queens. These were born out of the pandemic, says the musician. “During that moment of isolation, I really felt like I had an identity crisis. It pushed the part of my life that I live online to the extreme. And at that moment, I really dove into the hyperpop style of music, it obsessed me for months and months. I thought: what a perfect moment to make extremely digital music than a digital moment.”
Kroy also gave several turns of the screw in her way of singing, of placing the words. We have known for a long time that she has a very beautiful voice, but here, she played more, interpreted, giving another life to her stories.
“In the last few years, I’ve reminded myself that the voice is really my instrument,” Kroy adds. “It’s easy, when I’m writing songs, to focus more on the songwriting and forget that what I like, deep down, is to take the place vocally. On songs like Twelve Wheeler Truckfor example, at the end, it’s a bit more opera-like. I did it in showI felt like… » She leaves a silence. « I don’t know if it’s cathartic, but a bit like writing more violent lyrics, for me, letting myself sing with that amplitude, it allows me to live [ces émotions] in a slightly “primal” way.”
The songs of Militia will first live on stage at the Fairmount Theatre on September 28, as part of the Pop Montréal festival, before touring Quebec. But Kroy has international ambitions for her project, including in Asia, where her work is generating interest, but also in South America. To her great surprise, the songs from her first album had been warmly received at festivals where she had played, notably in Brazil and Chile. “Afterwards, I went to listen to other bands popular there, and there’s a darkness in pop in South America that people love so much, they really connect with that.” They’ll be served again with Kroy!