Deliciosamente saboroso, o trio canadense Femme Accident é daquelas preciosidades escondidas e que infelizmente é provável que permanecerão neste status, o que é uma bela injustiça.
Hum, último trabalho deles, lançado no final do ano passado, é uma audição viciante, seja pelo mix com cheiro de anos noventa, seja pela pegajosa voz de Sophie, o ponto é que quando se menos espera os pezinhos estão marcando compasso e a música do Femme Accident já te possuiu.
Dê uma chance a você mesmo e deguste sem medo de se divertir.
***** Interview with Femme Accident *****
Jonathan and Benjamin are from the same town, they were already playing in other bands together since right after high school. When we were playing in other bands it always was a lot of fun, but it never was the exact thing we wanted to play. We started looking to have a new band and play songs that are closer to our influences, and wanted to keep it as little as possible, so we can create a thing that every member like, not something with too many different directions.
We really had no luck finding someone to sing, so we played just the two of us for something like a year maybe. Then we asked a friend of us, Louis-Pierre, if his new girlfriend (our friend Jeanne !) would know someone that could fit with us, since she was hanging with a lot of musicians. She was working with Sophie, so she hooked us together. Sophie was already playing bass in her band The Peelies at that time, but she wanted to try to sing more so she came to a practice, and on our first jam we instantly connected, it was the perfect combination for the three of us. The sound of a band is really the combination of all the different influences from all members, and we loved playing together from the start (and still do !)
Q: Who are your influences?
Well, there’s no main influences for the band, we each bring our own things from our favorite bands when we were teenagers and all the new albums that we listen to. Right when we started we didn’t want to be a band stuck with a very precise style or sound, we knew it would be so boring to have ‘limits’ if we wanted to have this band for a long time. That’s probably why there seems to be a lot of different styles on our record.
That said, we usually have 4-5 albums that we really talk about when we are finishing an album, and we use them to communicate between us for the sound that we would like to have in the studio. For example for the last one we had ‘Observator’ from The Raveonettes, ‘Herein Wild’ from Frankie Rose.
Q. Make a list of 5 albums of all time…
Jonathan :
My Bloody Valentine – Loveless (1991)
The Beatles – Revolver (1966)
Slowdive – Souvlaki (1993)
The 13th Floor Elevators – The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators (1966)
The Jesus and Mary Chain – Psychocandy (1985)
Sophie :
The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Bravery Repetition and Noise (2001)
Elliot Smith – Either /Or (1997)
Holly Golightly – You Can’t Buy A Gun When You’re Crying (2007)
Mr Airplane Man – Moanin’ (2002)
Stereolab – Switched On (1992)
Benjamin :
The Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995)
The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced (1967)
Tom Waits – Real Gone (2004)
Rancid - …And Out Come the Wolves (1995)
Queens Of The Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf (2002)
Q. How do you feel playing live?
Stressful, intense, and so much fun ! We don’t have that many occasions to play live, so when we play a show it feels like a little treat for us, to finally be able to play to others what we rehearse for so many hours in our practice space.
Q. How do you describeFemme Accident sounds?
This is always done better by someone outside of the band who see only the finished results ! But if we have to tell people, it’s a rock band with influences from britpop, garage, new wave, shoegaze… and something particular about our band is that (we think) it can be at the same time a very ‘cold’ and very ‘hot’ sound… this is an abstract idea but people who listen to music can understand this very well.
Q: Tell us about the process of recording the album?
First of all, that’s our favorite part of the process, even more than playing the album live. We try to do It as much as we can, we think it’s so weird that a band that has been playing for 10 years and writing good songs have only one record. For us it represents our sound at a very precise moment, it’s like if we stop writing and make a resume of what we’ve been doing the last year. For an album we always write a little bit more than 40 instrumental songs. Some last only a minute, and we finish about half of these songs. At the same time Sophie and Jonathan write lyrics, and as we go along we choose something like 10 songs that will have lyrics. The process is really natural, it seems like the songs that should be finished are really easy to choose.
As for the recording in the studio, we just try to have much fun as possible and try as many things as we can with the studio time we are able to have. Some bands like to record a sound that is really close to what they will play live ; that’s absolutely not our case. Since we are only 3 musicians in the band and our live sound is limited by that, we like to add a lot of layers, many guitars, additional synths, percussions,… We think that when you see a live band it’s more exciting to hear a more raw, rock sound, not the exact album played live perfectly.
Q. Which new bands do you recommended
Not necessarily new, but let’s go with bands from our town (Montreal) that you should listen to : Silver Dapple, Crabe, The Muscadettes, No Joy, Solids… so many good bands. Also from outside this city The Auras, Astrobrite,...that list could go on forever.
Q: Which bands would you love to make a cover version of?
We really are not a band that is into making covers. Our favorite part of the process is to write new songs, so we prefer to use the precious little time we have together to try something new. We only ever played one cover, during our first shows when we didn’t have enough songs to play a full set, and it was ‘Bend Me Shape Me’, the version of The Models from the ‘Girls In The Garage Compilation’. We even recorded it for our first album ‘Charms’, but we didn’t have time to check if we could use it with the rights and everything, so it was never released.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
We would really like to play outside of Montreal more often, so invite us ! And we already started to write our next album, which we hope to be able to start recording in the beginning of 2016. Once again it’s different, it’s surprising even for us to discover what kind of songs we come up with, once we accept that it will not be what we imagined before starting.
Q: Any parting words?
Go see local bands playing in your town! That’s an order from your friends Femme Accident.
*
*
*
Thanks
https://femmeaccident.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/femmeaccident
