On her last visit to Montreal, Laetitia Sadier sang at MTelus in front of more than two thousand fans delighted to see Stereolab, the visionary group she co-founded in 1990. Saturday evening, it will be in front of a handful of die-hards in the small bar Le Ritz PDB on rue Jean-Talon, during a performance during which she will present new songs from Rooting for Love, his sixth solo album, through which the icon of avant-garde pop seeks to make sense of our times disrupted by a distressing absence of reference points.
If the identity of a group is expressed by the sum of the contribution of each of its members, we must recognize, when listening to Sadier’s solo work, how much she has shaped the protean sound, visionary, from the cult group Stereolab. Rooting for Love mixes electric and electronic instruments, her singing – in French or in English – refers to the timeless style of Françoise Hardy, if Françoise Hardy had lived in Cologne rather than in Paris in 1968 and she had frequented Holger Czukkay or Jaki Liebezeit de CAN.
As with Stereolab, we can still discern a hint of jazz and Brazilian popular music in the rhythms of the songs, often embellished with the sound of the voices of “his choir” – The Choir -, an informal assembly of musician friends. She will perform alone on Saturday evening, “with effects pedals, a sampler with which I interact to create things in the moment, because I like to improvise”, explains Laetitia Sadier, joined on theInterstate 94, somewhere between Minneapolis and Chicago. “I don’t like it when all the musical elements are predetermined. I like surprises. Ah!, and I will have a trombone with me on stage. »
Since the end of confinements, Sadier has had a series of projects and collaborations – she published last year Summer Long, a minialbum born from a collaboration with the Brazilian group Mombojó called Modern Cosmology. His new album was recorded in six or seven sessions of three or four days, sessions interrupted by “a lot of things, the pandemic, confinements, illness, tours, notably with Stereolab”. We read it between the lines, as always a little cryptic with Sadier: “Power of harmonization, eternal desire for union / In the complete void / The objective is to dismiss ignorance / To interrupt the endless cycle of suffering,” she sings on Proteiformunity, a melodious ballad with airy keyboards abruptly interrupted by jazz-funk-rock jolts. “I don’t really care what the listener will think, or not, of my songs,” she says candidly. I simply do what the song tells me to do, without trying to control it — I also understood that the more I try to control what I do, the less interesting it is, and the more I let myself be guided by this mysterious force that is creation, the more I learn. »
For Rooting for Love, she hired a new director, a German based like her in London, Hannes Plattmeier. “I really believe in the alignments of the stars,” explains Laetitia, letting out a laugh. “Sometimes people come your way at just the right time, this is the case for Hannes”, whose contribution was initially technical: sound recording, choice of microphones, mixing. “It makes recording possible. I know how to do the basics, but mix, if I did it myself, it would be disgusting! »
“He is an extremely versatile director and we look at each other.”eye to eye”, as they say: we are on the same wavelength musically, politically and philosophically. » These last three words are as important as the one they precede in Sadier’s approach: the music of this esthete is visionary, in many respects, but it is in tune with his point, not militant, but in his own way engaged, awake.
“Yes, of course, the pandemic has shaken up a lot of things, but in fact, everything we are going through at the moment was already underway,” she believes. We are — excuse me! —, shaken to the core. Shaken to the core. And I fear that this will continue, but in a way, it can also be very positive since it forces us to question ourselves. It’s been so long now that we’ve known we’re on the wrong track, that the world is heading into a wall. We know, we are in denial. However, being shaken in this way forces us to work on ourselves. We must change our ways [de vivre et de vivre ensemble] and we must take the path of healing. This is the theme of my album: healing ourselves from the deep wounds that keep us in patterns toxic, which we repeat endlessly. »
“I think we are really called to evolve,” says the musician and philosopher. Because we are very powerful beings, but forces—let’s call them capitalist, to put it simply—are holding us back. When in fact, we are fantastic creative beings. It’s our magic, our ability to create, and when we put our minds to it, together, we can work miracles. To create is to feel, it is to free oneself, but we are afraid, we are held in fear. And who says fear, says hatred, and who says hatred, says fascism – I’m going a little too quickly, but do you see the trajectory, all mapped out, into which we fall, collectively? Yet another world war? It’s up to us to refuse to play in this story again. »
We will want to perform the title of the album, Rooting for Love, as a note of optimism, despite everything. Laetitia corrects us: “The question is less about being optimistic or pessimistic [quant à la conjoncture], but to understand that we are in control of our own lives. What I want is for people to reclaim their creative power. Let us start creating our dream world. Saying it, singing it, formulating it is the first step that generates action, that leads to reality. This is also what I want to include in my album: let’s reconnect. To love, to the Earth; thus, we will be less afraid of doing anything, including voting for the fascists. »
Before hanging up, you can imagine that we asked him if we could also hope for a new Stereolab album, fourteen years later Not Music… His answer ? “Ah, that, I don’t know…” You didn’t say no, Madame Sadier. “I didn’t say no. » Perhaps this time we will be right to remain optimistic.