Additional Information
With Le voyage de M. Lonely dans la lune, Montreal’s psychedelic rock band Elephant Stone presents a first release effort in French. The four-song EP is the follow-up to their 2020 concept album Hollow. On that record, Rishi Dhir and his band dealt with the destruction of the world and the potential survival of humanity, while Mr. Lonely’s Trip to the Moon focuses on the survival of each individual and its consequences on a community. The son of Indian immigrants, singer, bassist, sitar player, and producer Rishi Dhir, who has been at the helm of the band for 13 years, describes the conception of this EP and why he chose to perform it in the language of Gainsbourg, a gesture that characterizes his eternal quest for identity.
PAN M 360: Who is Mr. Lonely and tell us about this trip to the moon.
Rhishi Dhir: M. Lonely is for me an extension of my last album Hollow, a concept album that was about a catastrophic event that destroys the earth, and then humanity needs to survive but in the end, we destroy what we create. I guess M.Lonely was pretty much influenced by the pandemic; we’re all home all the time, not seeing anybody. My wife was having a hard time not seeing people or be around them whereas I was fine. I guess musicians are kind of introverted extroverts. We like our quiet time to think about things. Any artists are like that. I actually thrived in it because I got to create more but at the same time, it got me thinking about the storyline of M. Lonely who never wants to be part of society and he sees the pandemic as a mockery of his condition and everyone imitating him. I was also thinking of the movie Le voyage dans la lune from Méliès. So M. Lonely builds a spaceship and goes to the moon and he looks back on earth and realizes after a while that he misses the imperfections of humanity and comes back to live out his dying years. So in some ways, it was also about me.
PAN M 360: Why did you decide to do this EP in French?
Rhishi Dhir: The band was always mostly composed of francophones throughout its history. The drummer Miles Dupire has been in the band for 12 years… So we often talked about releasing something in French. What happened is that, when I started writing these songs, I realized that the gibberish I was singing, just to go along with the music I was playing, kind of sounded like I was singing in French. So I tried to add some more English-sounding words but it didn’t quite fit as well as the stuff that sounded like French. That’s when I realized that these songs had to be sung in French. In every band I was in, we always talked about doing some songs in French, going as far back as the High Dials. I had a storyline for that album but I’m an anglophone and writing in French is not easy for me. So I asked Félix Dyotte to help me with the lyrics. He is an amazing songwriter and we’re good friends. So we hung out, we drank a lot of wine, and I gave him the storyline of each song and he wrote the lyrics afterward. I explained that part 1 and part 2 are very much emotional, more driven, and the last two parts are much more introspective. I guess I was listening a lot to the album Parachute by The Pretty Things at that time. So it’s more Pink Floydian, very introspective. When I went to Félix, he first asked me if I already had English lyrics. When I told him that I hadn’t written anything and that he would be writing the songs, that convinced him. I didn’t want a translation from English to French and neither did he.
PAN M 360: One inevitably is people associating the sitar with Elephant Stone’s music, but here, on the four tracks of the EP, it seems not to have any.
Rhishi Dhir: I recorded and mixed the EP in my studio here at my house. I do everything here. I recorded a lot of sitar for the EP but in the end, as I was mixing it, I made the decision not to put it in. You know, I’ve been doing this band for 13 years and the sitar always was a big part. But what I’ve learned, is to get that magical thing the sitar brings, you don’t always have to add sitar. For example, the song “La fusée du chagrin,” I had sitar in but it didn’t really add anything, so why put it in just for the sake of putting it in? That was a great thing to mix this album by myself because I got to really decide what I want to present rather to just give it to someone else.
PAN M 360: Now that you have an album in French, are you thinking of eventually doing one in Hindi?
Rhishi Dhir: Hmm … Nah. I thought about it, tried to throw a few lines in Hindi but, no. Maybe in the early days. When I first started Elephant Stone, I wanted sitar and was very much into my Indian heritage. I really wanted to showcase that but at the same time it had to be true to me, so it just didn’t make sense (laugh). My parents come from India but I was born and raised in Montréal. I have much more connections to this world than the other world. It’s a big part of who I am, it’s a struggle of not knowing where I fit in. Sure, my parents are Indians, I went to the temple but they never actually spoke to me in Hindi. They spoke to me in English thinking I would learn this language better. I grew up in Brossard, went to an English school but learning French in an English school back then wasn’t very strong, it was not well done. So it’s just growing up, having to deal with expectations of my parents who wanted me to be a doctor or something and then becoming a teenager and discovering Rock n’ Roll through my older brother and trying to find my identity in all of this. Every Saturday, for instance, I watched 3 hours long Bollywood movies with my parents… So my whole life, in every step, I never really felt I completely fit in a scenario. I feel like a square trying to fit in a circle (laughs). I think that’s why I am who I am. Even with the French and English culture here, it’s also not knowing where I fit in Quebec! It’s my day-to-day existence, so doing this EP is me trying to discover this other side of myself.
PAN M 360: And after this first French experience, do you think you will do more songs in this language?
Rhishi Dhir: It was a lot of work! Singing in French is very different. I was surprised at how difficult it is. It was a big effort, I’m not going to rule it out but I’ve already written and demoed the next album, and it’s in English… It was a mind fuck. I’m happy my accent wasn’t so terrible. Luckily it doesn’t sound like an Anglophone trying to sing in French. It sounds like I have a Spanish accent.
PAN M 360: Can you tell us a bit about this upcoming album?
Rhishi Dhir: We’re doing SXSW and then we’re touring the US this spring and in June we enter the studio to record the album. I listened to a lot of Yes and Genesis before writing the album. So it will be a bit prog but I was also listening to some Frank Ocean. So it will be a mix of everything. I’m excited because I think these songs are the strongest I’ve written in a while.
