User:Mr. Absurd/Blonde (album)

Q
"it represented the phase after a break-up when you really really just want the other person to disappear, not completely, but you know, from your life or your feelings or whatever you might still think about that, him or her, and I thought it was really funny because it was not directed towards him, in the videoclip, more towards the girls" "A vengeful act of blowing up heads!" (JG)

"It's part of the study in contrast that you are, I mean, you've got this, um, very sweet voice, uh, and you tend to write pop songs with very accessible, beautiful melodies, and then we see a video like this ... with heads exploding, and um, do you revel in those kinds of contrasts, is that something that you really like?" "Uh, yes, um, I think it's the irony of it all, um, there was this thing in the sixties where, you know, the term chanteuse and like, what they would do, they would talk about very, um, heavy subjects and place it on very cheerful music... Just because, you know, it's good sometimes to not take yourself too seriously, and um, I'm not saying that in my album there are no dark moments, but um, but I like to play on the irony of it all and just to show that you can get through things."

Howard Billerman, Arcade Fire and Basia Bulat — "Were you yearning for a bigger band sound on this record?" "I didn't really know, I knew that I needed to part ways with the piano a little bit more because I didn't want the piano to become a crutch, I wanted it to be the old friend that it was always to me, if anything. I also worked with Michael Rault, Edmonton-based singer-songwriter ... because I wanted that sixties sound, I wanted the, not just the desert rock but The Zombies feel to a lot of the songs as well, Nancy Sinatra"

"It's got a fifties or sixties kind of pop sound, absolutely, a girl group almost sound at times" (JG)

piano crutch — "Because it became that, for a while... I could hide behind it, it was like the skeleton to all of my songs, so I could just build around it and I actually wanted to showcase that I'm actually more of a singer-songwriter than just the girl and the piano... I think I kind of pushed the limits there for this album, I don't know how people are going to receive it because they're so used to it, the piano, the girl, the sad little songs, we'll see!"

"It's also about a girl that didn't know what to do with herself when it came to relationships, so she grew up too fast, and uh, therefore ... It gets pretty lonely at the top too"

"Coming to terms with the fact that I placed a lot of importance on love and breakups and everything else ... I had no idea how relationships were supposed to work, no idea whatsoever."

"This record for me is a little bit more personal, it's very fresh, it's songs that I've been writing on the road"

"This album is only here today because I wanted to record 'Place de la République', which is a song that I wrote immediately after the first album came out, and because I had been giving that song in concert and people knew it as part of my repertoire, I just had to record it for the fans, if anything ... I mean, I've got people that like my music now, so, I might as well ... do this, I might as well release a record. ... That song became a symbol for whatever I was feeling afterwards, with all the boys I've been with ... It was defining for me"

"catalyst for this record" (JG)

"A lot of people judged me from the first impression they had of me, which was unfortunate, especially I'm, less in English Canada because for some reason I'm still indie here, which is great, but, but back home and back in France ... As the girl that had that one song [Comme des enfants], that, you know, that was blonde and had tattoos and that played piano, and that was about it, and then they didn't dig deeper, and they thought that what I was singing about was kinda stupid ... I hope with this one ... it crosses over, obviously"

Songs
"Adieu" "Moi je trouve qu'il y a quelques choses de l'enfance ... un espace de vagues d'enfance qui arrive par la mélodie "sur 'Adieu', je trouve que le refrain il y a un energie qui m'a rappellé les Cités d'Or des thèmes d'émissions pour enfantsFrench interview on YouTube

"Golden Baby" "jaunty cabaret"

"Ava" "Colin Stetson’s positively jovial horn"

"Loin d'ici" "country-tinged" "shuffling, old-school country"

"Les amours dévouées" "kittenish" "kittenish Vanessa Paradis-esque"

"Verseau" "Spector-ish girl group pop" "jangly, joyous-sounding (the troubled lyrics of which are less upbeat than the music)"

"Saint-Laurent" "I wouldn’t collaborate with anyone I didn’t have a story with, because that’s what makes it interesting" "The most Montreal song of the bunch"

"La petite mort"