To say that Marie-Pierre Arthur has zigzagged over the years of her solo music would be an exaggeration. But her path is certainly not a straight line, and her fifth and final album, Blue albumis further proof of this. These nine pieces mark another sonic shift, born in particular from the breath of new collaborators and the adoption of a more frontal working method between the singer-bassist and François Lafontaine, her sidekick at work as well as in the city.
“I take great pride in making big turns of the steering wheel,” says the pride of Grande-Vallée, in Gaspésie, a talented singer-songwriter who has been crossing the Quebec music scene with her soulful touch for nearly 20 years. “I believe that the day I want comfort, it will be because it will no longer be worth it. One day, I may say that I fought with it for nothing, but right now, it’s like a pride that I have,” she says, putting back her hair beaten by the still warm wind that sweeps the Rosemont terrace where she has invited The Duty.
Blue album — which follows Lights to see it“which everyone called ‘the red album'”, says Arthur – plunges us into a hybrid world, ageless, so much in the sound of the moment, but also in soul and in a tasteful synthetic past, between Moroder and Talking Heads. A strong energy emerges from this mix of atmospheres, channeled into very tightly woven patchwork tracks.
So we land where Marie-Pierre Arthur arrived by not following the usual path suggested by the GPS. This musical detour, she explains, comes largely from the method that she and her lover, François Lafontaine — known as “the keyboard player of Karkwa” — adopted to make these songs.
“It comes from a more intense intimacy than ever,” confides the author of For whatof If you knew and ofTake me away. We were always together in the same room. We tried to leave in another way, by starting [la création] together instead of showing each other things that we had each done on our own. It really challenged us, and at the same time it really framed us. And we could put in place couple’s therapist techniques while working! “Active listening, in the house as well as in the studio, in other words.
It’s like giving yourself a leg up, Marie-Pierre Arthur sums up, which allows you to place your creative instincts on new paths. In addition, she specifies, the primary objective of these sessions was not to concretely give birth to songs, but rather to give birth to material.
“We really worked as if we were making music for the image, creating lots of moods. Sometimes, I would go back to completely special things. We must have hundreds of little bits. There are some that are horrible, there are some that are like being in a cloud. Then after that, we would listen to them again, and I was more attached to some than others. There are some that made us want it to become a tune, that there would be a form […] around.” Then the idea of making a record with all that materialized.
Steering wheel among steering wheel turns, the Arthur-Lafontaine team launched its musical sculptures by putting beats on the base, more than melodic lines, for example. “We don’t do hip-hop!” says Marie-Pierre, who has nevertheless collaborated with Mantisse, from the rap group LaF.
This openness to other musicians from different scenes or other “families” is also one of the keys to the success ofBlue album. We hear the voice of Rose Perron, from the group Rau_ze, the guitars of Joe Grass and Nicolas Basque, the drums of Robbie Kuster and Max Bellavance, the batá lines of Lisandre Bourdages and, above all, we note the multiple contribution of Sébastien Blais-Montpetit, a jack-of-all-trades. “He has worked a lot with people who do more hip-hop or electro, he has other references,” explains Marie-Pierre Arthur.
The singer, whose voice is “perhaps less lyrical” on this album, says she feels the wind turning in her career. “I’ve often been a person who gets invited. Now, I feel like I can invite. I feel a lot of new people entering my life musically, young people too. I think that [ça explique] “A lot of all the new colors that have come in.” She also says she is very interested in what makes today’s teenagers tick, thanks to her own music list.
In search of the truth
What makes these nine tracks an album are also the lyrics, written with Caracol, Amylie and Gaële. Marie-Pierre Arthur understood afterwards that she had dug a common furrow. “I was walking to get here and I realized that it was very much about the truth, in all its facets. Love, but truth in the bonds. Silences that I don’t understand, those that I may have had, people who move away, changes in relationships.”
Each album by the artist represents a phase of his life, and this one is thus tinged with a great sensitivity to human relationships, which over time become corroded, blurred and veiled, often without us really understanding why.
“It really affects me, I also overanalyze my friendships, family ties, my relationship with my son. In life, I always feel like I’m out of my depth when I try to say something that’s very true, that rings true. I talk too much!” And these songs allowed him “to remove all the layers of camouflage and politeness and dare to say: ‘But what’s going on? There’s something I don’t understand, let’s explain.'”
Did she think, throughout this whole creative process, about what the public would think of these new things? “I don’t even think about that for a second,” she says. “I think about the pleasure. There’s something that tickles when you achieve what you wanted to do.” And now? “I think, ‘Ah shitI hope the world will follow!” she says with a laugh. I hope the world will like it, that I make big turns of the steering wheel like that. But I tell myself that my biggest fantasy is to be 75 years old and for people to say to themselves: “So she is good game again, her. What is she going to come out with? I would like to have that aura.