Twenty years after setting foot on the music scene underground from Montreal, multidisciplinary artist Annie-Claude Deschênes finally gives us a first solo album. A concept that has already been simmering on stage for a little less than a year: Table manners, the most unique musical project of the season, uses decorum and gastronomy to question our social and stage relationships. Explanations with the cordon-bleu of Quebec experimental punk.
We don’t forget our first meeting with Annie-Claude Deschênes. For our part, it was around twenty years ago, on a small stage in the metropolis, while the musician was struggling at the microphone of the art punk-electro quartet Duchess Says. Our first meeting with Annie-Claude Déchaînée: what a beast of a performer! In concert with Duchess Says, “we let ourselves go, we did stupid things, it was limitless,” summarizes the musician.
“But here, with this project, it’s something much more experimental,” she warns. This is the performance we heard the most about last fall in Rouyn-Noranda, during the Annie-Claude Emerging Music Festival alone on stage, with her synths and her strange prepared dishes that she was going to serve to the spectators.
“I’m looking for a new way to communicate with the public,” she explains. “With Duchess Says, we tried lots of things: me going down into the crowd; invite the crowd to continue the show outside the room; bring the audience on stage while I am in the room; get people out of the room then bar the door: no more spectacle. My challenge is to try to connect with the audience in another way, to include them in the performance in another way. I need to try something new, because I don’t find pleasure in doing the same thing over and over again. »
“I cooked a lot before show at FME — more than repeated. Maybe I exaggerated! » she remembers. “I wanted everything I was going to serve to be edible, that is to say the plates, the glasses, the utensils, the trays. I wanted people to question whether it was edible or not, I wanted to measure the reaction of the spectators. »
The hunger to create
This fad came to her during the pandemic, when, away from her friends from Duchess Says and the group PyPy (a new album is expected this fall, on the Shattered Records label of American musician Jay Reatard), Annie-Claude had the Urgent need to create — something, anything. “I have a lot of energy to create, I’m obsessed with it. I create every day, all the time. [Pendant la pandémie], I needed a project that I could do myself, without depending on others. »
Building a small music station in her studio, she threw herself body and soul into danceable but dark electro-pop, in the style of old Depeche Mode, surly Duran Duran, European prototechno, in an aesthetic similar to that of Marie Davidson. It’s devilishly effective: among other nuggets, this Minimal threat with persistent rhythm, dissonant synthesizers from which an incredibly catchy chorus emerges.
Table manners is probably the most accessible musical work in Annie-Claude Deschênes’ repertoire, who nevertheless cringes when hearing the comment: “It’s the most punk thing I’ve done, precisely because I did it without expectations, without imagining that these songs would be made public! »
The themes of manners and gastronomy were added to his song sketches along the way: “At the time of Duchess Says, I was obsessed with the parakeet. But there was a shift in my mind and I started thinking about culinary aesthetics for a long time. I knew that one day I was going to do something like a decadent dinner show. »
During the confinements, she explored her idea. Rummaged through the utensil drawer to record the sounds of spoons and forks being banged together. “I mixed this with the idea of surveillance by video cameras, to make a link with old new technologies. It comes from my desire to adapt to our times, but every time I get interested in a new technology and end up understanding something about it, it seems like it’s already obsolete…”
The pleasure of art
Even for her, this concept around technology, rules of decency and gastronomy remains mysterious. “It’s not even important that what I serve tastes good,” she admits. (Her foods do not contain peanuts since she is allergic to them and are essentially made from gelatin, coloring and almond paste.) “At one of the first concerts I gave, people had everything eaten — the whipped cream like the plates! she laughs. But for the launch concert at the Phi Center, I want people to have fun. I want a party more than an artistic performance. »
Annie-Claude Deschênes will also soon travel to Paris to serve her sweet dishes and electro grooves.
“I had to do a lot of testing in my kitchen to get my recipes right,” she says. “Too many tests: my family wondered what was wrong with me. There was powder everywhere in the kitchen, even in the fridge; Jell-O and gelatin arrived at our house by the crates! Imagine me with my hair padded, with powder everywhere, brewing my orange or green potion… Well, I had some fun — but for the launch at the Phi Center, I hired a food stylist! »