FRINGE 2015: A conversation with Choses Sauvages

On Thursday night June 20th, two bands performed at le Divan Orange during the homestretch of the Music at the Fringe Festival series.

The bombastic Mehdi Cayenne Club opened at 10. Mehdi, the lead singer of the band with a happy-go-lucky personality, added some extra spice to their already explosive musical set.

When I asked the girl sitting right next to me what she thought of the show, she answered: ”Je sais pas ce que j’en pense, mais j’embarque”.* Turns out, she’s a blogger named Valerie Poulin. If a little French reading doesn’t scare you, head over at Feu à Volonté to get her impressions on the concert.

Later that night, there was the funky eclectic Choses Sauvages. It means Wild Things in case you’re wondering. And they’re as untamed and wild as their name entails.

I spoke to the band members — Félix, Tommy, Marc, Philippe – and their occasional guitarist from Foreign Diplomats, Élie — for CJLO at le Divan’s backstage, or as we call it around here, the underbelly.

Read more to see our conversation, translated into English from the original interview in French:

...

Frantz: How do you feel?

Choses Sauvages: After this show? Good. It all went super well. Our performance was tight.

The venue manager walks in and interrupts the conversation

CS: Sorry about that! Did you enjoy the show, Frantz?

Frantz: I loved it! A bit earlier, I was discussing with Philippe the way you played with your rhythm. You got me real good! I was sure your were using somewhat exotic measures and time signatures, but he told me it was all the good old standard 4/4.

CS: We do insert a beat, or bar of silence here and there. We also try to insert some weird beats on more pop sounding riffs. We make dancey music so we’re just trying to have fun while playing.

Frantz: You guys go from pop, to rock, to funk, to jazz …

CS: The thing is, we’re four guys who don’t necessarily listen to the same things at the same time. Choses Sauvages is lot of ostinage* to reach a final product that we can all agree on.

Everybody laughs

From the get go, we are friends who enjoy playing music together. There’s no preset structure to the band and you can hear how eclectic our first EPs are [“Late Night” in 2013, “L’épave trouée” in 2014, and “Japanese Jazz” in 2015]. But on the album we’re working on —

Frantz: There’s an album coming!?

CS: Yeah … hmm… We’re working on it…

Frantz: Any release date in mind?

CS: It’s all in the air for now. We’re giving ourselves a good year to compose new material and see where we go from there. We feel that as a band, we have reached a cohesive sound. We’re somewhat all into funk jazz and Herbie Hancock right now. So we’ve decided that we want to play jazz even though we’re not jazz musicians.

Frantz: I heard this was your last show…

CS: …our last for this summer. Actually, it’s only our last show in an official Montreal venue. We might still busk at Place-d’Armes during lunch hour.

We’re also going to Sorel, where there’s the Fast Festival. That’s pretty cool. In fact, Sorel is like the Liverpool of Quebec. There’s the Port and the Old Town and people chew tobacco.

But actually, we haven’t booked that many shows. It’s been hard to manage: keeping the buzz alive, coming up with new songs, preparing sets for shows and performing — all at the sametime. We want it to be a smooth ride from now on, take it easy, and simply concentrate on composing new material.

Frantz: Are you guys all from Montreal?

CS: We’re from the North Shore. St-Eustache. Rosemère. And Ste-Adèle in the deep Laurentians. We’ve been living in Montreal for the past five or six years.

Frantz: Did you guys all meet at the same CEGEP?

CS: (Félix responds) I didn’t go to CEGEP. It didn’t want me.

Frantz: I have the impression it’s actually you that didn’t want CEGEP.

Everyone laughs

Your set is in Frenglish. You sing in English and talk to the audience in French. How does that work?

CS: We don’t know? Actually, let’s throw that question back at you.

Frantz:  (laughs) Sure! What’s the question again?

CS: What do you think of our Frenglish set?

Frantz: I find it truly interesting how you manage to reach two crowds here in Montreal with a bilingual show.

CS: Would you keep the set as is?

Frantz: Yup

CS: Right now, Frenglish seems to work better in the Hip hop world. It’s not as widely accepted in “rock” bands. People have a hard time labeling us, and it’s something that becomes really complicated when we’re applying for festivals or trying to persuade record companies to sign us up.

If the question is: do you sing in English or in French? We go with what we feel. We write music and lyrics the way we feel like. We don’t really think of language and whatnot. We’re not making a statement. If we lived in the best of worlds, that wouldn’t be an issue.

It’s funny. Around the world, you will have a band — be it Swedish or whatnot — that will sing in English, even though it’s not their mother tongue, and no one bats an eyelash.

Here in Quebec, grandma and pops are still asking us: “Pourquoi tu chantes pas en français?”***

(Everyone bursts out in laughter)

Frantz: One last thing. I noticed Félix sang, dealt with the sound guy and touched about every instrument that’s on stage. What’s up with that?

C.S.: (Félix responds) I have the least musician-like qualities of all the guys in this band. I have no formal training in music, and I know that shouldn’t get in the way of making music. I enjoy playing with rhythm.

Tommy, with his formal training, plays melodically. I think it makes for a strong and beautiful contrast in our sound.

Marc and Philippe are the ones with the theoretical knowhow. They can write and read sheet music.

We try to all play with our strengths and switch instruments regularly. In reality, we basically are four bands in one.

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Footnotes (French to English)

*"I don’t know what I think about it, but I’m going all in!"
**French for bickering
***Why don’t you sing in French.

If you want to learn more about “Choses Sauvages”, Check out their Facebook page right here. You can also download all of their EPs for free here on bandcamp.

Frantz-Patrice Séïde Cameau is part of CJLO’s Official Fringe Team covering the sights and sounds from the 2015 St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival.

You can contact Frantz by via email: lobster.mtl@gmail.com