Almost all the songs from Elliot Maginot’s new album, titled I Need to Stay Here, seem imbued with religiosity. Harmonies of angels in Float on Nowalmost gospel choirs in Show me Love, words of a sort of personal gospel, existential questioning. “ I’ve been a lot before and this is all a vision / Always a little darker / Cam across this false creator / and I believed him / And I still do », he sings in his high-pitched, almost whispered voice, as if he were speaking only to himself, carried by the classical guitar of Joseph Marchand. “ My mind is numb and my soul is tired / Faith is wearing thin », he continues in For the Living.
On the way to his apartment on rue Adam (no coincidence) in the Viauville district, in the heart of the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district, the bell towers are still so numerous that they seem to mark a path. To end up where? ” I don’t know. It’s there, I meet these churches every day. And it is undeniable that despite myself, I use this lexicon with Christian connotations. More than ever, it seems. However, I have no religious practice, I consider myself an atheist, I didn’t grow up like that. Perhaps unconsciously, by dint of raising my head towards these bell towers and then lowering my eyes and seeing the state of the world, I am looking for answers. Yes, everything is in decline, but until proven otherwise, we continue to exist, so what do we do? »
This is where the album leads, certainly: to hope, against all odds. “ Is there a lesson to be learned […] Show me Love “. Literally. Show me, everyone! How do we live with others? The answer is in the question: we live with others, and then there it is, come what may. The fact is that the recording of the album took place in this building. Directly, it’s hard to believe, as the arrangements are so complex and the instruments numerous: strings, winds, brass, piano, organ, synths, guitars, mandolin, banjo… Up to ten musicians and backing singers at the same time.
A sumptuous album at home
Such a sumptuous home-made record, how God is that possible? “It’s not a miracle, but it’s not ordinary either. We’ve done almost everything here. Yes, there are additions, but we worked in my not at all professional premises, my creation and rehearsal space, which is connected by a staircase to this apartment. Back, you go down three steps and there you are. We brought in a machine type, all kinds of business, and we found ourselves there, a little piled on top of each other. The vocal microphone picked up the guitar, the drums were all over the place, the sounds leaked and mixed together, that’s what we wanted. Play. We didn’t want to come together. »
“I have always seen the studio as a kind of Frankenstein, a fabrication, an assemblage into which we artificially breathe a little life. I didn’t want to sit at the computer… Well, it’s certain that for certain stages, you end up at the computer, you don’t get through it. But there is nothing that takes the place of the human experience of playing together. It was last summer, it was hot, we had to turn off the air conditioning for each take, we were dripping with sweat, between takes we opened, we took a puff of air… It was painful and great, trying and alive. We went out to eat on the balcony, the wind saved our lives. »
We still needed musicians with such expertise that dripping bodies managed not to slip next to the notes. “It’s high level. When you are a good enough musician to move beyond the notion of work and enter the zone of pure joy, anything becomes possible. » No doubt it should have been the fourth album (plus a bunch of scattered pieces, including a cover of theHello mom bobo by Souchon and a good number of Christmas songs, go figure) to dare to carry out an open-heart musical creation operation in a makeshift hospital in scorching Viauville. The analogy is not excessive: the result is surgically precise.
The beautiful compromise of life
“Still,” adds the artist, “we rehearsed a lot, the arrangements were in place, we knew where we were going. Connor Seidel [coréalisateur de longue date] is the perfect guy to get into this. Still, it meant mourning perfection for everyone. Sometimes it wasn’t my best catch that we kept, simply because everything around it was to our liking. What is perfect for the flautist is not necessarily perfect for the bassist: yes, we are in superior know-how, but also in compromise. It is no longer each musician who creates his own score, it is a song that is born. That’s music, because that’s life. »
When you have Erika Angell, Claudia Bouvette and Katie Tupper on backing vocals, it’s obviously great. “He is here, my happiness. » After experiencing that, Elliot swears he stopped thinking about what would happen to the album once it was released. “Having lived this summer together, the rest is random. The quality of interpersonal relationships goes beyond the result. There is real confidence which little by little takes the place of the ego. I’m not at all waiting for sales figures the day after the launch. I just know that I will take every opportunity to play these songs. Yes, the fact of filling my rooms, after having played for a long time in front of four people, that counts, you don’t want to go back, but that’s not the main thing. »
And Maginot highlights the children’s noises that we hear at the end of several songs. “It was summer, children were playing outside, people were walking, life was happening. For me, the album bears witness to that. » The block, the alleys, rue Adam, rue Leclaire, the beating life. “My goodness, to come back to this great word of religion, it is there. » Prayer to live! Please, let’s live! This is Elliot Maginot’s only credo.