A few days before the launch of her album Dogue at the Francos, we spoke to Ariane Roy. Ahead of the show on Wednesday the 18th at Club Soda, we talk about the pressures of being a solo artist, touring France and the pleasure of composing while making yogurt.
PAN M 360: Dogue is a darker, more synthetic album, different from medium plaisir. Was this a conscious break with the slightly softer, warmer image projected by your previous album?
Ariane Roy: That’s a good question. Is it conscious or not? I think yes, it’s conscious, I wanted to go somewhere else. But it’s not because I’m denying the past or that I want people to see me differently. I think something else was calling me, and I didn’t want people to necessarily label me as soon as I released my first album, or associate me exclusively with something.
PAN M 360: In Dogue’s lyrics, you can also sense a feminist stance, as in the song Tous mes hommages. Does denouncing certain behaviors make you more vulnerable, or is it more liberating?
Ariane Roy: It’s really more liberating for me. It left room for anger and assertion, and at the same time allowed me to use a mocking, sarcastic tone. I think it’s a bit part of me: I have a dark sense of humor, I’m always ironic, and I want to transpose that into my music. It’s as if for me, the simple way of tackling cruder subjects is to use self-mockery or mockery and have fun with it. I don’t know at what point I asked myself the question “ok, I want this to be feminist”, it just came naturally with the woman I am in general I think. I position myself as very feminist in life.
PAN M 360: Do you have a favorite song on your latest album?
Ariane Roy: Tous mes hommages was one of my favorites for a long time. I really like this song because it’s one that I’d really like to have heard as an audience. I think it’s great when you get to that point, when you say to yourself, “If this came out, I’d be really happy to listen to it”. It really corresponds to what I like, there are the breaks in tone, I like the bass line. I think it goes right to the gut and I think it’s catchy, but at the same time, I think it’s a tense song. I wrote this song very quickly, it seems to have come to me naturally, whereas other songs were more difficult to write. I also felt it was very different from anything I’d done before. I’m glad I released it.
PAN M 360: Do you have an established creative process?
Ariane Roy: Well, I’d say that sometimes it’s easier, you can feel it, you just have to stop everything. Let’s say you’re doing the dishes, it’s something that happens, you go away and write. I think that when you’re creating, you have to listen to those moments, except that it’s important for me to show up to work every day. In other words, every day I sit down at my desk, I test things, I go into Logic Pro. All the time, I have to have some kind of exploratory phase, even if I don’t necessarily feel like writing or composing. There’s a discipline I have to impose on myself. I need to have the impression that there’s a structure to my work to feel that it’s serving a purpose, otherwise I have too much anxiety. I’m easily distracted, so I have to put the odds in my favor. I’m a good student.
PAN M 360: Does the music usually come before the lyrics, or is it the other way around?
Ariane Roy: For this album, it was really the music that came first, while medium plaisir was quite the opposite. When I’m composing songs, I sing my melodies with semi-anglophone words invented just to give me a lead, and that leads me elsewhere. After that, when I write French lyrics, I try to find phonemes that sound like that or that have a bit of the same groove to the music, which isn’t really easy. Sometimes it’s taken me 6 months to write a text. I don’t regret having worked like that, because I don’t think I’d have written this album if I’d worked any other way. But it’s true that it was a difficult task at times, but I think it’s instinctive for me to work like that.
PAN M 360: Speaking of musicality, you worked with Félix Petit on this album. What was it like to combine your two musical worlds?
Ariane Roy: It was really fun because I took the time to compose at home, try things out, find my sound, and then it seemed that when the vision was a little clearer for me and I knew where I was going, it just sort of imposed itself. The person I had to work with was Félix. I’m a great admirer of his work and what he’s done with artists before, and I think Félix is a brilliant guy who also has an arranger’s sensibility. We’d met before, but we’d hardly ever spoken before, and then we started making music straight away. I came in with my own stuff, and he really gave me confidence in my vision. He taught me to have confidence in my abilities. What I also appreciated was that he didn’t try to misrepresent me. Félix has a really impressive instinct. With him, it’s all first drafts, first ideas that are really hot and bold, and artistically it really, really clicked.
PAN M 360: Speaking of collaborations, last week LaF released a new version of their song June with one of your verses. How did this collaboration come about?
Ariane Roy: In fact, they wrote to me asking me to add a verse. Their idea was to bring June out again, but in a different way. They were like “explore des affaires”, a bit of carte blanche, so I made them a verse. I did it at home, on my own, and they thought it was nice, so we got together to record it. It was really fun. To be honest, LaF is a really great discovery. It’s a band I knew, but not that well, like I’d never really talked to them in person. I think they’re full of brilliance, and full of smarts. It’s really fun to collaborate and I really like that song, so I’m glad they thought of me for it.
PAN M 360: And if we’re talking about collaboration, what would be your dream collaboration?
Ariane Roy: My dream collaboration would be with Saya Gray, a Toronto artist I’ve listened to a lot in recent years. She’s a real inspiration to me. It’ll probably never happen, since she’s too big now, but you never know, I’ll throw him into the universe just the same.
PAN M 360: You’re launching Dogue in Montreal this week as part of the Francos. How does it feel to be playing in front of a sold-out Club Soda?
Ariane Roy: I’m really looking forward to doing the show, and I’m glad we’ve had time to do it a few times before too. I’m a bit stressed, but I’m more into excitement at the moment, there’s not too much stress yet. I think it’s going to be good for me to be in contact with the Montreal crowd, it’s going to be fun!
PAN M 360: Do you have a pre-show ritual?
Ariane Roy: We have a good pre-show ritual. It’s a bit inspired by a ritual we used to do before Roy, la Rose et le Lou[p]. We stand in a circle and take three breaths. After that, a member of our band gives a motivational speech as if we were going to play a field hockey game. After that we have a call and it’s “Who let the dogs out” and then the number of “oohs” we make is the number of shows we’ve already done on the tour. Let’s say this is our eighth show, we do eight “oohs”. It’s pretty complicated, but we do it before every show.
PAN M 360: You’ve just come back from Paris, I saw you did a show at La Cigale and you’d already done a little touring in France in the past. What’s it like doing shows abroad?
Ariane Roy: It’s really fun! It’s a bit intimidating all the time, because you don’t really know how people will react over there. I mean, I arrive there as a stranger, an unknown too, but so far, the reception has been really good. It’s gone really well. I think it’s great to have everything to prove when people don’t know me. I don’t have any expectations when I go to Europe, and I think that really helps me to enjoy myself and find it less stressful, because it can still be intimidating. No, I really like it!
PAN M 360: Finally, what did your tour with Le Roy, la Rose et le Lou[p] teach you? Are you nostalgic about touring with a big gang?
Ariane Roy: Honestly, I don’t feel that nostalgic, because right now I’m touring with the lighting technician from Le Roy, la Rose et le Lou[p], whereas before I didn’t have a lighting technician, so there are more of us than before. There are eight of us on tour, which is already a lot. But I’ll tell you what I learned from being with Le Roy, la Rose et le Lou[p], it was extraordinary all the same. Going on tour as a gang with friends is a dream come true. It proves that it’s important to be well surrounded, it makes a difference. I’d say it also showed me that I need to have people around me when I go on tour, because I find that it can be a job that makes you feel alone at times. I often feel alone, because there’s a lot of pressure on my shoulders. I think that when you make the choice to be a solo artist, it’s normal. There are also times when you’re in an interview and you’re more alone, so I really appreciate the times when I’m with my band and it becomes like a family. We carry this together somewhere, and for me it’s very reassuring, so it was good to have that with Le Roy, la Rose et le Lou[p]. Confiding in each other and experiencing it together, especially as we were sharing a show as a trio rather than alone, is a real game-changer.