Vulgar Things | Empathy is an act of resistance

Twelve years after its last disc of new songs, Vulgaires Machins opposes to this world to die of shame its empathy, more than ever carried by the voice of Marie-Eve Roy. “I finally assumed myself”, says the one who signs half of disruptionthe comeback album we had almost given up hoping for.

Dominic Late
The Press

Prerequisite. After its event show at the Francos in 2019, Vulgaires Machins decided to resume its activities for good, but not without forcing itself to write new refrains. There is no question of joining the many ranks of those for whom singing means singing the same tunes ad nauseam.

Another sine qua non. “I said from the start that if we were going to do something again, I wanted half of it to be my tunes,” explains Marie-Eve Roy, who co-founded the group in 1995 in Granby with Guillaume and Maxime Beauregard – drummer Pat Sayers completes the current roster.

Hidden weapon of the essential punk band, its guitarist and bandleader had never dared to establish herself as a songwriter. Two solo albums will have succeeded in curing his lack of confidence. “I haven’t always been super welcoming”, recognizes with humility Guillaume Beauregard.

Live : such is the astonishing title, apparently not so Vulgar Machins, of the first piece of disruption. “And as long as my face denies my pain / I will remain a stranger to yours”, sings Marie-Eve Roy, as we repeat to those whose happiness we have at heart that their suffering is not weak or compulsive. That it’s OK not to be OK, to borrow the title of the fourth song from this solid album, which also looks more like an outstretched hand than a fist in the air.

“Empathy for others, empathy for nature, we need it more than ever”, advances Marie-Eve Roy, by naming the main idea of ​​this resurrection: empathy for the pain of the First Peoples (Between grief and blame). Empathy for the willing hostages of the American Dream (Asylum). Empathy for those who resist the urge every day to concretize the hatred that inhabits them. Empathy even for bad readers of Orwell, who damage precious words by misusing them (Freedom).

The impossible nihilism

If he brings disruption a salutary form of continuity, Guillaume Beauregard, after two solo albums and two children (with Marie-Eve), is no longer quite the same man, at least no longer the same songwriter. “My nihilism is laughable, and harmful, and abject,” he chants in the instant classic Obsoletea sentence denying part of the thought of Vulgar Machins, always torn between despair and his faith in the possibility of another world.

“It was a revolution for me to become a father,” he says. I was sick of shouting “The system sucks” in a punk context and there was a moment in my life when I was like, “Fuck it, we’re going into the wall, but what do you want me to do, I’m going to find my happiness.” But it caught up with me: nihilism is a good way to avoid going crazy, but it becomes impossible when you have children. »

“All my ideals fall / All roads lead me / To cultivate hatred”, launches in the same song the one whose reflections were fueled by those of the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, whose essays describe in particular the deleterious effects of hyperconnectivity.

“Our politicians constantly say that we have to create wealth, when the opposite is the case,” concludes Marie-Eve Roy. But I see that more and more of us are realizing that we have to decrease, make sacrifices, take responsibility, all together. When you think about it for two minutes, conscious and lucid, it’s complicated, but possible.

punk-rock

Disruption (to be released October 14)

Vulgar Things

Costume Records