It’s raining. It’s snowing. April 24, lady! The same day when The duty meets Navet Confit on the occasion of the release of his tenth album and his twenty years of vegetable career in the fallow surroundings of the garden of song. Having been extremely rich, one might believe that he did this on purpose, our fellow of a rare species, a long-stemmed legume. The fourth song of the album Sorry movement gesture isn’t it called It rained it snowed ? Is it not, what is more, the strong song of the harvest, a miraculous shoot which pierces the sky, in relation to the divine participation of Giftedness? And if it was possible ?
But no. Sprinkling the clouds with particles that pierce them is not provided for in the allocated financial support. Let us quote Navet Confit explaining this with many resounding arguments in another song with a very long and no less eloquent title: You often ask me why I don’t do a lot of shows.
“it’s quite simple you see
this is mainly because after 20 years in the profession
I am still offered the same pills
(when offered)
than when I was 25”
These words don’t rhyme with anything to make a song, they look like an extract from a letter in the Ideas page of your Duty. Or an interview excerpt. However, they are anchored to a heavy guitar riff and are sung to a syncopated rhythm which surprisingly fits the words. It is a fortiche, Navet Confit, capable of engaging all alone in a game of tug-of-war between sense and the senseless, chaos and order, the thunderous and the delicate, the terribly serious and the absolutely fun. “I can say “I believe” in the first degree and, thirty seconds later, turn around and believe in the eighth degree, making a joke of it. It’s my way of surviving the tragedy of life. »
To last is to start all the time
And this is how he manages to make music, in his own unique way, over time. Twenty years of emergence, mazette! He giggles. “It makes me laugh, this description, it implies a certain freshness. I can complain about the very real difficulties of the job for the duration of a song, but at the same time, it’s not so bad, since I’m still emerging. Making Navet Confit is not my whole life, I make music for the theater, for the cinema, I direct, I do quite well. » You can be both Navet Confit and Jean-Philippe Fréchette, in the same large escogriffe body with a generous laugh.
The new album is a vegan treat with plenty of meat on the skeleton. In the title song, we go from the tense atmosphere of a 1960s spy film to a release of riffs close to death metal, then we curl up in a jazzy hammock bombarded by electronic noises. “I don’t know in advance where it’s going to go, I have a whole series of bits of recordings and samples that I put in when I have time, but not randomly either. » Sorry movement gesture places the album on high tension lines: how will we get out of this?
The art of extreme contrast
In the next song, Change time, vigorous acoustic guitar strumming conveys a “certain nihilism”, our interlocutor admits: “there’s no point, the world is ugly / there’s no point changing the time (2) / is the life becomes / less worse when we die? “. Yellowish laugh. End of the world humor. Very intended contrast between the words and the music. It’s always surprising, pleasant, even pretty, between the decibel blitzkriegs. The more the song deepens the unease, as in It rained it snowed (which ends with the leitmotif “everything burns as planned”), plus Navet Confit has fun with the words: “by habit / lightning rod / of the undecided / decided / to disappoint”, he sings with Douance. “I love alliteration. It gives a little air, it lightens even the heaviest words. »
“I denounce, but I have a lot of love for the subjects I discuss. Life is absurd, but we still live it every day. » The goal, we understand, is to feel less alone. In the very deliberately repetitive and minimal Look at my hair, we share the entire world-spectacle of social networks in a single shocking image: “I let my hair grow / look / I had my hair cut / look”. Everything is shown, everything is said. “What I’m trying to show with this extreme illustration is everything that is not shown while the hair is growing. The real connections between people. » So much hair to touch, to caress, so many beautiful heads under the mop of hair. Navet Confit is a tender poet of the palpable. “I am not dematerialized. We continue to exist physically. I still listen to vinyl records! »
Strangely close
Navet Confit, cultivating its strangeness in a pot, is no less a being of proximity. In another song topped by an extended title, I’m the skeleton that sings to your ears at nighthe describes this wonderful sensation of rapprochement between humans that occurs when a singer whispers his melody to us between a rock and a hard place: “and when I sing for you / I sing as if you were right there / right next to me […] and that’s how we tune in.” Is not it ? He adds: “I have never understood those who sing at the top of their voice.”
“Nothing is ever guaranteed. Who listens to my records? I don’t really know. Sometimes people write to me that this or that song was important, that we listen to it like a close friend. It is enough for me. The mere possibility that some people live a relationship with a song as if they were the one and only recipient, I find that to be the greatest achievement. I’m not interested in singing louder than a screaming crowd. I’m interested if a contact is established. » The presence of a few singers, familiar Sheenah Ko and newcomer Chloé Jara-Buto, signifies this to us: “I record alone by necessity. I couldn’t afford it otherwise. Their unique voices, and the presence of Douance, are rare joys, which are essential to me. » The cultivation of Candied Turnip depends on it.