It is as a poet that Daria Colonna has mainly shown herself to us for almost a decade, with what she very briefly summarizes as “a literature of the origins of identity”. The ups and downs of her personal and romantic life – basically depression and break-ups – however led the artist to tame a new way of expressing what was eating away at her: music. Starting from nothing, today she is launching a record of dark songs bathed in trip-hop, entitled The Requiem of the Drunk Sirens.
It was in Dunham, where she had moved during the pandemic with the man who would become her ex, that Daria Colonna felt this call of music. What she had in her heart, carried by what she calls “a melodic memory”, she instinctively shaped it into songs, on an old keyboard that was lying around.
Sitting in the sunny courtyard of her Montreal apartment, alongside the record’s producer Vince James – who later became her boyfriend – Daria Colonna is both emotional and laughing, humble and confident. She knows that she does not have an imposing musical background – her piano repertoire until now was limited to the theme of Titanic —, but she knows the words. His latest collection, The thiefamong other things, allowed him to be a finalist for several important awards, including the Émile-Nelligan Prize and that of the Governor General.
“But I couldn’t put it into a book because it was very emotional. And I experienced this emotion better, or it was more real, more authentic in my voice,” explains the 35-year-old woman. For her, creation through song is “less violent” than that through poetry, “which is extremely rigorous work”.
The rhyme exercise
Daria loved the rhyme exercise, very intuitive, and which she sees as a liberation rather than a constraint. And in poetry, “we are expected to intellectualize emotions, to be knowledgeable about our emotions, then to give a vision of the world that is also full of ambivalence. »
She does not consider her words to be poetry, but they convey strong emotions around sadness, death, alcoholic parties, breakups – she even leaves room for the pen and the voice of her ex, the actor Émile Schneider, for a piece.
I wanted something that was in keeping with the poetry […]. At the beginning, we collaborated with people who tried to lead us towards pop songs… but how do you expect me to act on stage singing that? I was completely distorting myself, it wasn’t me.
The title The Requiem of the Drunk Sirens However, it is not based so much on alcohol, explains the singer. “It’s a mermaid who is in the water and who is drowning in the oxygen, which is stale. There is a paralysis generated by that, and a lament that comes out of it, illustrates Daria. It is this sort of overflow of the visions of others, of the obligations issued by man, of what is expected of you, what you are told to be, what you are told that is your place and what you are told is not your place. And I, in that, well, I was suffocating, because I had a feeling of life that was… broader. »
The music on this first disc is to match. It’s haunting, dark, but with rhythms that move everything forward. Drums and trumpet coat everything, and the band also received help from the versatile Clément Leduc (Hologram) and Gabriel Gagnon (Geoffroy, Milk & Bone, Alex Nevsky). Ariane Moffatt also sings and plays in a play, the veteran having had the role of godmother for Colonna.
A different world
“I wanted something that was in agreement with the poetry, I saw it as a continuation of my artistic identity, which I still worked hard to make clear,” analyzes the singer with a calm voice. At the beginning, we collaborated with people who tried to lead us towards pop songs… but how do you expect me to act on stage singing that? I was completely distorting myself, it wasn’t me. »
The Requiem of the Drunk Sirens is finally launched independently, but it’s not because Daria Colonna hasn’t gauged the water temperature in the Quebec music industry. In fact, it would have been difficult for her to delve into a world that she did not understand, which she attempted to do by meeting many people navigating it, including several artists and artisans.
And she discovered a world very different from that of poetry “which automatically admits itself to be poor”. There, in music, she had “the impression of facing an environment which has recently become poor, but which does not yet know it. The structure is made for an environment that generates money, because there are a lot of intermediaries and protected areas.”
In her humble quest to understand the music industry, she also found that, unlike poetry, “where the product is enough”, it was “more the packaging and the ribbon” that mattered. . “It’s not the work that will achieve success, it’s the money you put into marketing, it’s how you’re going to present yourself on Instagram. » She agreed to modestly feed her social networks, but Daria has in a way opted for flight, she who will be traveling on the Spanish coast when her record comes out.
Precisely, this first disc ends with the title A girl at dawn, on which she says “look for the answers in the shells”. The last words of the song also go like this: “from now on / if you look for me / you will find me / in my bed / finally ready for peace”. What is peace, Daria? “Of course I had in mind: ready to die. But I’m ready to leave everything too, ready to reinvent myself. At least, to escape from the twists and turns, from the multiple pressures and multiple sufferings, that I put behind me. Then life is not more extraordinary, it is just sweeter. »