Full english Transcript of the Episode with Chou: Blanc
Please note : This is an English translation of an automated (yet perfected) AI transcript. It is provided for informational purposes only. While we did our best to capture the vibe, automated tools can sometimes twist spoken words—especially with our local Quebec slang! For official or accurate reference, please consult the original audio episode.
Hugo Lachance: It is September 29, 2024, in Terrebonne, in a beautiful suburban pavilion at Patch's place, and you are listening to L'Album Podcast. And yes, today is a very special episode because we have a truly exclusive exclusive—yes, ladies and gentlemen. But before I properly introduce my guests, I’d like to thank Vlad from Hopéra for sponsoring today's episode. Hopéra is a superb microbrewery located in Jonquière, and also a pizza restaurant, so they are providing the beer today; thank you very much, Vlad.
Just to say, mine is called "Ryan Gose lime"—yep, that's right, puns in everything, it's perfect.
I'm drinking the "Czech Pilsner," which is excellent, and Gab has the "Guinness, the good vitamin."
Thanks Vlad, if you ever go for a trip around Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, stop by Hopéra. Also, before we start, I want to thank everyone who subscribed, to the listeners out there. Thank you to the new subscribers on social media, YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify; it's really appreciated, we love it when you comment on the episodes.
Now, we welcome back a group we saw—the episode aired this past August 3rd—the last time we met was at the Vieux Palais in L'Assomption last May. I'm here with Chou, hello!
Chou: Hello! Hello! Hello!
Hugo Lachance: And you're releasing... well yes, we're here, I was talking about an exclusive because we are going to hear your next album as an exclusive before anyone else. We're doing a regular episode, obviously we won't go through the whole history of the band because you can refer to the August 3rd episode for that, but right now you're going to present your new album.
Chou: Yes, really happy, it's really cool.
Hugo Lachance: I'm here with Charles Laplante.
Charles: Yes, hey.
Hugo Lachance: With Gabichou.
Gabichou: Hey.
Hugo Lachance: Patch.
Patch: Good afternoon.
Hugo Lachance: And Bruno Bouchard.
Bruno: Good evening.
Hugo Lachance: Thanks for lending us your backyard, Patch, it's really appreciated.
Patch: 100 bucks an hour!
Hugo Lachance: We’ll start with your new bio, just so people can get to know you a little better. So, the Chou adventure begins in 2018 when Bruno Bouchard approaches Charles Laplante to beat the boredom in a garage on the Plateau-Mont-Royal with some guitars, which was initially an uninhibited attempt to plagiarize the music of the band Hot Snakes that quickly derailed.
Charles: Yeah, well that's some Hot stuff that derailed!
Hugo Lachance: Charles has a way with words. Personally, I want to congratulate those who take the time to write bios that actually make sense, seriously it's really cool because a bio can be such a generic text, but yours is awesome; so much the better. The experience shoots in so many directions that the group has no choice but to deconstruct the term "anarcho-punk" to create the only genre that can bring all their influences together: "arachno-punk."
Charles: "Arachno-punk" comes from that, actually.
Oh yeah, the Chou spider. No, but it just started with a joke about Anarcho Panda—remember Anarcho Panda during the student crisis? We called him Arachno Panda and said: "Holy fuck, imagine if he shows up in a spider costume with a panda head, people would lose their minds," you know.
Hugo Lachance: It ended badly for him anyway…
Charles: …from that moment on, every time I saw the term "anarcho" somewhere, I thought of "arachno."
Bruno: The panda-spider hybrid was more organic, there was really a "body horror" vibe to it.
Charles: In the end, we just transposed that because we didn't know how to describe our music, and we figured "arachno-punk" is funny, dyslexic people will think we're "anarcho-punk."
Hugo Lachance: Even those who aren't dyslexic—I got caught myself last episode.
Charles: Exactly, but I'd say the ratio of people who get caught by it is pretty much 70-30.
Bruno: I'd be more generous than that.
Charles: Well, 90-10 is generous. No, but there are still some who go like "arachno-punk, that's fine," but usually when I read reviews, they often say "anarcho"; I don't care what they call it.
Bruno: Yeah, me neither, I don't care what they call it.
Hugo Lachance: Now we continue with the addition: the lineup takes off with the arrival of the aggressive Gabrielle Oltra on drums and the thunderous Patrick "Patch" Chagnon. Hey, by the way, we have family ties, don't we?
Patch: Yeah.
Hugo Lachance: We didn't mention it last time, but your cousin is my daughter's mother. Right, the band's first album, a self-titled collection of their pre-pandemic tracks recorded to the rhythm of the curfew, was launched right in the middle of reopening, so your first album came out in May 2022.
Chou: Yes, yes!
Hugo Lachance: Followed by a covers EP titled Rose in 2023, and a second, even louder album answering to the name of Blanc in 2024.
Bruno: So you could say we're going to "draw a blank," oh yeah, that's it! So we're here for the album that's going to... that's right, you're going to draw a blank.
Hugo Lachance: We're here to present your second album, which is called Chou blanc. Album description: here I'm reading the stuff you sent me, you included names of artists who influenced you for each of the songs. Among others, we find: Drogue, Le Nombre, Majesty, Hot Snakes (four times), Cloud Nothings, Galaxie, Radio Activity, Thee Markman, Karkwa, Rocket From The Crypt, etc., etc. Patch is making a face, he didn't know!
Patch: But you know, I consulted you every time!
Bruno: Oh yeah, yeah. But I did that for the... uh
Charles: Oh yeah, yeah. Oh right, OK, OK, OK, I didn't know where that came from, I thought it was me.
Hugo: No, because in the description, there are like a ton of influences, you really banked on that. So my question, Bruno: did you finally get rid of your Queens of the Stone Age influences?
Bruno: No, no, my final answer is no! Question for the listeners in the comments: why did Luc Senay use to do the splits on La Guerre des clans? I asked myself that question this week and I don't get it.
Charles: Is it to draw a crowd?
Bruno: Yes, I think today you do a show and the guy does the splits at the end, it wouldn't fly. Why? I think it wouldn't fly.
Hugo: Listen, I think it's a trademark.
Bruno: Yes, but what kind of trade?
Hugo: The first time he said to himself "I'm gonna do it," I don't know if the whole crew was like "oh that's cool," but then you can't just do it a second time; how did he manage to get that past the board?
Patch: Maybe it was a bet too?
Charles: It's easier to do when you're five feet tall, doing the splits, if you ask me.
Bruno: Shoutout to Luc Senay!
Hugo Lachance: It created a semi-concept around failure, so your theme for the album is failure, is that right?
Charles: Yeah, or something else, but you realize that everything that makes you laugh in life is people experiencing failures. It just came out like that and you shouldn't read too much depth into it either.
Hugo Lachance: No, but I find it super interesting.
Charles: Yeah, but there are still degrees of failure in the songs, in pretty much all of them.
Bruno: And the thing is, Charles just says nonchalanly that the album talks about failure. I'm like "huh?", I read the lyrics and I go "oh yeah, oh yes that's right," in retrospect it fit perfectly.
Hugo: It goes very well with the title Chou blanc.
Bruno: Yeah, yeah, well it just started from the pun "Chou blanc" and then we kind of wove connections into it, but we've known for a long time that we were going to call the album Chou blanc. It wasn't completely composed when we knew.
Hugo Lachance: How long has this album been composed? It seems to me the last time we saw each other it was done?
Bruno: Well, it's been a bit more than a year because we started recording
Gabichou: The weekend of September 23rd, we recorded.
Bruno: Yes, recording, but composing has been a bit longer, almost two years actually.
Hugo Lachance: Oh yeah, OK.
Bruno: Yes, there are songs that are two years old for us, it's not a new album. There are songs that were supposed to be on the first album. "J’ai chaud," which is now called "Ça plombe," we call it "G," it was supposed to go on the first album. We had tracked the drums but not at the right tempo and finally we got discouraged along the way, but it was supposed to go on the first album.
Charles: "Rien" too, the instrumental has been there for a really long time.
Bruno: We put it right after the first album, when we started making music again the four of us together, "Rien" was the first track we did as a band when you came back to the jam space and we jammed.
Hugo Lachance: OK, well that's perfect. Be that as it may, this second effort, more energetic and urgent than its predecessor, hits the mark and deals with failure, whether environmental ("Il va y avoir des morts"), economic ("Tirelire"), or romantic ("Rien"). All things you've experienced?
Charles: No, not even, actually! Well yes, you know we've been through breakups but I mean it wasn't as pathetic as what we talk about.
Bruno: Speak for yourself!
Charles: Oh OK, I'm not aware, but anyway! Yeah, there are things in there that are inspired but you know, usually we go for pretty extreme caricature.
Hugo Lachance: Your music and your lyrics are also focused on humor and exaggeration. But so, more energetic, what would be the difference in terms of energy exactly in the music?
Charles: Well, Gab hits harder!
Bruno: She trains every day at five in the morning, she trains so much she's ripped now, I'm scared!
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, I know, I saw pictures of her back on Instagram.
Gabichou: Yes, of my back, she already purged!
Bruno: We purge well. But the back is still there, for instance.
Hugo Lachance: Perfect. So an album that's more energetic, less relaxed?
Charles: Yeah, that's it. On the first album, there are parts like the intro of a certain track that are more relaxed, but on this one, it's pretty much pedal to the metal the whole time.
Hugo: Listen, I've been listening to this album for about five months now, you sent me the files, and it's true it's an album that is really more energetic.
Gabichou: You can tell it's been the four of us since the beginning, we're the four of us together and that's why it's much more energetic than the first one too, because we each put our...
Charles: Yeah, that's it, the instruments are tracked together, there's no click track, it's more concise as an album.
Patch: We're continuing the interview, no stress, there are four kids running around all over the place here.
Patch: Oh yeah, I don't have my... I'll just drop my things and keep jamming. Yes, no problem, I'll come back if anything comes up.
Bruno: If you hear someone yelling "hey, leave your sister alone!", that's normal.
Hugo Lachance: Well right there I was getting to another question, but we were talking about the energy and the difference in the compositions.
Bruno: In fact, when we arrived with the demos for the Blanc album, there were a lot of tracks where Gab looked at me and went: "No, that can't be played, that's too fast, too loud, too no." And finally, now, they're her favorites.
Hugo: Exactly the same thing as last episode, it's just like that. But congrats because it sounds really good, the drums are really cool too.
Bruno: I knew it, I knew she could do it!
Gabichou: Yes, for sure.
Bruno: You'll see, she's gonna surpass me and she'll be able to do everything. You'll see, I'll show up with demos just for her to say "I'm not playing that because it's too simple"!
Hugo Lachance: So the band calls back sonic architect David Fournier for the mix, but also for the recording. Among the notable facts of the making of the record, we must mention the creative contributions of the guests: Catherine Jeanne-D’Arc from the band Charogne and Simon Turcotte from Guhn Twei. We also find a few grains of the unique voice of François Chagnon. François is practically the fifth member of the group.
Charles: Yeah, he's like our trademark. In Mastodon before, there was always Scott Kelly; François is our Scott Kelly. Oh yeah, but he didn't beat his kid so we hope he's doing better!
Hugo Lachance: Yes, yes, yes, on Teck's album he's there, so I've been dragging him along for a while. OK, and David Fournier did the mix and the sound engineering; Bruno is the one who put us in touch with David, he had already worked with him.
Bruno: The Chou album by the band Chou, for us, was recorded by our own means and after that we had David do a mix. This time around, we said to ourselves: "Why don't we have him do everything?"
Bruno: OK, did you end up recording at your place or not this time? But for the future, that's the plan. We'd like to record at home.
Hugo Lachance: Because last episode, you said you wanted to build a studio at your place.
Bruno: We've been rehearsing in the studio for several months now, I could say that the first jam in the studio, we all looked at each other and it just did not work at all; you can't even imagine how loud everything sounded but we couldn't hear a thing. It was like it created a vacuum and was pulling the inside of your ear.
Charles: Personally, I almost quit the band that night.
Hugo Lachance: Oh yeah?
Bruno: No, but every night!
Hugo Lachance: But what did you do to fix that?
Bruno: Oh, I put a bunch of junk in there, I brought in everything I could and now there's density. But ideally, eventually, it would be to do acoustic treatment, but that's other money I don't have. Because we just talked about how we recorded at Mandragore studio. Yeah, it costs money to record in a studio, for sure. It's money we don't have, by the way; I'm announcing here as an exclusive that we're going to start a GoFundMe to unban Charles Laplante from Couche-Tard. He did... but actually maybe not an exclusive because the GoFundMe will probably launch before. We're starting with that, I'm calling the person for the goal. 1,200 bucks, we don't know how to unban him. A hefty sum.
Hugo: How much do you owe Couche-Tard?
Charles: Contractually, I can't talk about it.
Hugo Lachance: How much do you think?
Charles: I don't know, a couple grand.
Hugo Lachance: Well listen, we're calling on everyone in the description.
Charles: At worst, you can go there and you'll wait.
Bruno: Yeah, but I can't hold your hand all the time, you gotta fly on your own... OK, OK, that's good.
Hugo Lachance: It should also be specified that the core of the thirteen songs was recorded live without a click track over a single weekend in the fall of 2023. What else? You did it without a click this time, tell us about your studio experience.
Gabichou: It's without a click, that's what we wanted, and at the same time we wanted it to give a bit more of a natural energy. And it shows in your playing, I think; does it... does the tempo pick up a little bit towards the end? But it's just because we're so into it, the track just goes up another notch even more. I find that nice, but yeah, we really wanted it to be more natural.
Hugo Lachance: How did you record it in the sense of, was everyone together or was it just guitar, drums, and bass?
Bruno: We had rehearsed—well, not with the click—we had rehearsed together. But you know, when I proposed that we record without a click, there was some nervousness at first, I remember your reaction was "no way." And you know, "OK, but what's it gonna bring?", and trust me, it's gonna have a more organic side. What I find fun is that Charles had been calling Gab "the human metronome" for a while and you know, we recorded without a click and she proved it was true because damn, she is tight! We did it. Well yes, well yes, well yes, no but you know you can say something and believe it, but we did it and we could really rely on her tempo, it works.
Charles: Well, you know, when I had other drummers in my bands, I always had to turn around to see if they'd be on cue when I jumped into the song. Gab, I never look at her during a show, not at all.
Hugo Lachance: No, but you guys have the foundations it takes, you have very good foundations.
Gabichou: But I'm glad we did it because it was really an experience... well, it was super fun, but that's when I realize how... and our tracks aren't simple tracks to do on drums either. There are guitar and bass parts we could overdub and fix, but the drums, from start to finish I couldn't make a misstep, not one mistake, so it was really like very, very, very... I'd finish a track and I was stressed out of my mind because I was so focused. But so much the better because it... well no, but so much the better!
Hugo Lachance: And you did it in one weekend.
Gabichou: Two and a half days? Well, setup and drums, and tuning took a whole evening. The next day, Friday, Saturday until Sunday pretty much.
Charles: And the vocals too, that was done in other sessions on top of it. I started, I was at the tail end of COVID and I sounded like a punctured lung; we had to redo tracks because there was a wheezing sound. Personally, I didn't feel it when I was doing it but afterwards I'd do that and it came through; anyway, it was weird.
Gabichou: When you listen closely, you can hear it, you can hear your leftover COVID!
Hugo: Oh yeah, I heard it. I guess with the frequency in there, it doesn't get lost too much. So that's it, and what has evolved since the first album besides the musical style?
Charles: Well, I think, you know, there's like a bit more metal influence, especially on the second side, because you know, I'd say like "Pin" is almost like Deftones, yeah right!
Bruno: Yeah, but also it's really the first album that was composed with the four of us. Nobody was added along the way, so everyone took their place. There are a lot of tracks that were composed when I came here with my daughter and she played with Patch's daughter, so the kids play together and we play together, and that's how we composed the tracks. And you know, what I love about working with Patch is that he doesn't give up—not just the kids—he doesn't give up when something, a harmony, is missing. "OK no, well I won't play that in unison, I'd add this," you know, there's like musical theory and that kind of magic, so "OK, I could do this and it would do the trick." I look and I go "yes, yes, yes, yes," and you know, I trust him on that; he really managed to work the composition to find depth in the arrangements that maybe on the first album wasn't there as much.
Hugo Lachance: Well, I agree because I've been listening to the tracks for a while and it shows, it shows that everything clicked, that Chou became Chou. And I think that's everyone's contribution, you can tell you work together now. Because it must be said that on the first album, you arrived like after all the composition, you even redid bass tracks. How was it for you to compose this second album?
Patch: With or without the kids?
Hugo: I understand completely, I'm a owner of three kids myself.
Patch: Right now I found three out of four, so that gives me a 75% ratio, you get a passing grade. What was your question again?
Hugo: Yeah, no, how did you find it, your approach to the songs with Chou for a first time?
Patch: Often the recipe is that I receive a guitar track, roughly often with drums, and the page is blank for the bass. I listen to what's going on, after that I call Bruno and tell him: "I need to know what your chords are," and he looks at me and says "I'll send you a video." He sends me a video, I look at that, that, that, and like I was saying, after that I always build around it, I have... we say the root, after that I'm gonna play the third, the fifth, the fourth, after that I'm gonna invert the sixth, I always play like that. It doesn't show when you listen to it, but if you isolate the guitar and the bass, you'll notice "oh, he's playing something completely off-key,"
Hugo: You don't play the same thing.
Patch: The best example I can give is in the long track, the title is very long: "Offrande au dieu de l'indifférence." Bruno uses an effect, and when I listen to the effect, I listen to the notes the effect makes. OK, he plays the root and it's a fourth below, OK, so then often I start on a line, I go up, I come back down, I go up, I come back down. It doesn't show because in what he plays, it's already there.
Bruno: What I love about that is that mainly Charles and I are really numbskulls, and it's good for the guys to play with Patch because sometimes he tells me "oh, you did a seventh something," and the way he talks about it is genius.
Patch: Yes, but it's accidental, it's 100% accidental.
Hugo: He's the kind of guy who makes you smarter, who makes you look smarter; we need a guy like that.
Charles: It's totally true, if we were just like four Charleses or four Brunos, it would be anarchy; a band of four Charleses, I want to hear that, you invite me to your first show!
Charles: In fact, Chou is like a good chili, you know, there's some kick too, some lean meat, some little peppers; nice analogy.
Charles: Who are the peppers?
Bruno: The spices, yeah exactly, cool.
Hugo: So the title is Blanc, what year does the album come out?
Charles: October 18, 2024. Yes, that's why we have it as an exclusive.
Hugo: Label: Folivora Music.
Charles: Hey, what's that, Folivora? You signing with Slam? No. Folivora. Musicians: Bruno Bouchard, guitar, vocals, lyrics. Charles Laplante, guitar... vocals too? No.
Charles: I don't even play guitar on this album, on the album.
Bruno: Earlier he set my guitar down and broke a string with the guitar just sitting there, that's his skill level.
Charles: Yeah, but I play a bit live, but on the album no; I could've done it but we said "ah no."
Bruno: But the next ones, we're gonna compose more closely and I want there to be tracks in the works. I know last interview we talked a lot about the upcoming album, but if you will, it's the same band, but that's it, so I want Charles to add more of his riffs. Like, say on the first album, it was a lot of his riffs too. OK, so yeah, we're going back to the roots.
Hugo: But on this album, are your riffs on it?
Charles: Minimally, I think in the last track I have a riff, and I don't know, you know, but there's all kinds of editing we did as a group that I don't remember, but maybe I have something to do with other stuff too. But it's more the lyrics where I was actually not bad.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, right, Gabrielle Oltra, drums and then on backing vocals, is that right? No, you don't sing?
Gabichou: Well, maybe, we always try.
Bruno: But live, watch her, she sings absolutely all the lyrics, oh yeah OK, while playing, yeah by reflex.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, that's good. And Patch on bass, are there other musicians?
Charles: He plays piano too, it's true. Yeah, there's a little piano track in the background in the bridge of "Faut qu'il trouve," yeah, "Faut qu'il trouve," I didn't hear it. It's just that I don't isolate it, I listened to your album quite a bit though; you play piano?
Patch: Yes, on this album, yes, I played a piano line, we're gonna laugh because....
Hugo Lachance: Who are the other musicians besides vocalists François Chagnon and Catherine Jeanne-D'Arc? Mixing: Alain Douches. Mastering: Alain Douches. Yeah, Alain Douche.
Patch: Shoutout to Alain Douche, he doesn't understand French.
Bruno: We don't know!
Charles: But in any case, by email he's strictly in English.
Hugo: Maybe he understands but he never told you, that's it. David Fournier did the mix and the tracking.
Hugo Lachance: Recording period, when did you guys do that?
Charles: Well, it's been a year since we did the weekend of the core recording, so the rest went until April-May of this year. It was in September that we recorded, it was in September, yeah it's been a year, we were celebrating the first anniversary.
Hugo: And there are thirteen tracks on the album. And now the cover, I was eager to get to that because look at the cover, we're gonna put it right there, watch the magic: one, two, three! Who came up with this idea for the cover?
Charles: That was me!
Hugo: Congrats because the cover is the cover of The Beatles' White Album and with masking tape it says "CHOU,"
Gabichou: Written by his son, on top of it.
Hugo: Oh yeah OK, it's true I saw that, I loved it.
Charles: It's funny, people really like it. Philippe... I ran into Philippe Renaud at the FME and he was cracking up over the cover.
Hugo: It's funny because when you sent me the tracks, there was a sort of cover made with artificial intelligence. Yeah, that's it, it's a cabbage with a bunch of stuff. Then you tell me "no, no, that's not the cover, don't worry," I'm like OK cool, perfect.
Bruno: And I had that in mind, but when I saw the cover, ah man, I found it so funny. But what's funny is that among ourselves, as soon as we recorded, we started telling each other that we'd have to start checking out the cover right now. And we threw around all kinds of ideas and I said: "Look, I'm gonna ask my bassist in my other band, he already did the cover for the band I had with Patch called Wee. Lebastien Segault." Sébastien Legault, it's Lebastien Segault, that's true, so there aren't any lawsuits. And that's it, I just push the idea "yeah, we could do a straight-up rip-off of The Beatles' White Album." And he was cracking up and was totally down and went "yeah, well I think we finally have some good ideas."
Charles: The thing is, when Seb joined the project, he pushed the idea all the way not to just rip off the cover. I was just like "we do that for the outside, the front," but inside, they are entirely designs that you find in the original jacket
Bruno: And he went into detail too because he's a director, he did it professionally. He really went and found the exact same font.
Hugo: He remade the cover. It's not just the cover with tape on it.
Bruno: No, no, no. It's Charles' cover with tape on it, but for those who are gonna get the vinyl copy—because we're releasing a vinyl on October 17th, the day before—the whole inside is modeled one-to-one. He made himself a template based on The Beatles' White Album, he copied it. On the center label of the vinyl, The Beatles have a green apple: Chou has a cabbage! We went that far, we're really trying to attract lawsuits or something. The cabbage that's there is a cabbage that flew straight out of Loblaws, from Couche-Tard. Hold onto your hats, Nintendo, Nintendo's lawyers are vicious as hell!
Charles: It's true that beyond failure, the second underlying theme of the album is copyright infringement.
Hugo Lachance: Straight up, Folivora gathered their army of lawyers.
Patch: Yeah, well I think when it happens, they're gonna find it pretty silly to come after us. Perfect then.
Hugo Lachance: To your heart's content. Cover design: Lebastien Segault, is there photography? Cover photography?
Patch: There's a collage of all kinds of stuff, but you know, he's not a photographer, it's Lebastien Segault who went on our page and gathered photos, he made a collage. We looked at that, we went "well yeah, it's the poster collage," he took the collage because in The Beatles' White Album, there's a foldout with the lyrics on one side and the other side is just a photo collage, and it's really—the position is replicated exactly on The Beatles' collage, but it's more nonsense stuff.
Hugo Lachance: Now your launch is October 17th at the Cabaret Foufounes Électriques. And you're supposedly gonna have vinyls. Are you gonna have other formats?
Bruno: Yeah, we didn't make CDs, we didn't make cassettes. Digital, obviously.
Patch: No 45s. No, I don't know how to answer when you tell me that, I don't know what a 45 is when he talks to me like that, I feel like Bruno is talking to me in black and white.
Hugo: It's a little vinyl with a big hole in the middle.
Charles: You'll come over to my place, I'll give you a quick crash course.
Hugo Lachance: Ah, that's good! Is there anything else to add on the conception of the album? With a blank like that, I guess not. Shall we listen to it? And that is a quality pun!
Bruno: That is a quality pun. Well, I liked it!
Hugo Lachance: Shall we listen to this album? We're gonna start with "Il va y avoir des morts." Stop everything you're doing, I made you a little gift. So I have good news and bad news for you, we set the place on fire and we claim the insurance, we scrape our planet and we move to Mars. The good news is I bought you a cat so you don't realize it might already be too late.
Charles: It's like a family man who is slightly hysterical and doesn't really know how to explain things to his kids so it's not scary.
Hugo: But it's really good though, it starts obviously with a little relaxed intro. For the album, it takes off pretty hard, the sound is super good.
Charles: It couldn't be anything else but an album opener, actually.
Bruno: It was composed for that, at the time I composed it we had the Francos show coming up and we needed a punching track to open. I tried all kinds of things and then at one point this happened. And when Charles came to do the lyrics at my place, I hadn't finished writing the lyrics. Personally, I have trust, Charles comes to my place, he's unprepared, he's unshaven, he's semi-eaten, he's thirsty, he has all his needs, you know. If he were a car dashboard, all the lights would be on! So he arrives and then I have him read my text, all that, and he says "yeah, I'm not sure about that specific thing," he brings back things. And then at one point I said: "I have good news and bad news for you," I knew that was how I wanted to start the track. And I wanted it to switch from me to Charles, but I didn't have the good news. And then at one point while writing the lyrics, a cat passes by the window and Charles and I look at each other, and then we get the idea to say that the good news is I bought you a cat so you don't realize it's already too late. And then we write that, we're cracking up laughing, we can barely sing it because we're laughing so hard. And I draw a little cat by hand, all ugly, and for a long time we told each other "that's the drawing I'm scanning and putting on the cover." But that night when we recorded the demo version for the first time, that was the cover.
Charles: I want us to put it on a t-shirt.
Bruno: The cat is so ugly. It says "CHOU" on it, it's truly written by a guy cracking up; anyway, it's fabulous, it's a beautiful inside joke.
Patch: Do you remember where you found that riff? I remember, no, so it's a bar we like, it's very dark in that bar, everything is painted black on Sainte-Catherine. You tried that during the soundcheck at the Piranha!
Hugo Lachance: Yes, for real, real?
Patch: Yeah, during the soundcheck you messed around on two chords and it took off, yes I filmed you on stage, you're right.
Charles: It adds a dramatic reach to have found the riff at the Piranha, damn, we've already played there.
Bruno: My goal would be to do a show at the Piranha that would be the worst show at the Piranha and that on the flyer it would say like we're gonna do the worst show we can, like there's gonna be wrong notes, we won't tune up. Charles will forget his lyrics, we're gonna ask the soundman specifically for it to sound like crap, yeah I really want us to do justice to this establishment and give a set that is up to its measure.
Hugo Lachance: OK, we played there too with WD-40, yeah shoutout to the Piranha crew, it's not that bad!
Patch: Yeah, it's not bad, it's going well.
Hugo Lachance: For us it's fine, the ceiling isn't high when you play drums in the back. So that's it, so it's good for "Il va y avoir des morts."
Bruno: Just to make a parenthesis, I have a big handful of wires in my hands, not because I want to act like a hardcore singer, listen it buzzes if I touch the mic it buzzes. You brought me a kitchen mixer, it's not true I'm gonna do that, I put on a tie Lord, so I have a lump of wires. What are you saying?
Hugo Lachance: You remind me of Phil Anselmo!
Bruno: I had the worst back surgery.
Hugo Lachance: Chapter 8: "Je fais attention." After three years of pandemic, it's clear that the world isn't spinning right anymore. You just have to read the comments on any social media post to realize it. That's where the inspiration for "Je fais attention" comes from, an abrasive and catchy tune that deals with voluntary isolation from loved ones and pushes the concept of conspiracy theories to the extreme.
Charles: Yeah, it's more to laugh at conspiracy theorists a bit by exaggerating, giving the most exaggerated form of delusion you can find. That was the goal. But personally, it's mostly the instrumental that interests me in that song because Bruno, at one point, he comes and sends me that. Right then, I'm like: "I'm gonna throw up!" But for instance, after two or three listens, it's like: "Christ, it's good!" And then, finally, we still had to muzzle Bruno because he would've put it in all the tracks. When he brought out his purple pedal for the first time, he like caught onto something.
Bruno: Yeah, and that time, that night when I composed that track, I said to myself: "No, I gotta do something, it's too good, it makes me want to puke." I want to puke physically! And then, I try to make a riff because, you know, like Charlie does with his voice... he still does it. And if it's just... you can't discern anything. I have to make big intervals between each note. So that riff, I tried to make it so I pass big intervals so that, precisely, the effect doesn't smear your effect too much.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah. For the nerds, what's your effect? How do you do that? Yeah, go ahead, go ahead!
Bruno: No, it's a secret. It's like fried chicken: you don't ask Colonel Sanders what his powder is.
Charles: It's like cough syrup: Krusty the Clown! Plus, it's purple.
Hugo: Tracks, but is it the kind of effect: you get to a show and it doesn't work?
Bruno: No, it works all the time. It's reliable and I love it. When I made that track that evening, I do the track and I whisper some crappy lyrics to myself thinking there's no way I'm making a track out of this. I did that in my living room before going to the studio, so I whispered so I wouldn't wake up my daughter. It's pitiful, the performance is pitiful. Charles listens to it with his girlfriend and they're cracking up. She's like: "Personally I'm doing that exactly as is, it's a track!" I said: "For real?" Yeah, and you know, you didn't change much compared to that version. But when I went to bed that night, my heart was racing because it was too intense and it was too weird. You know, then with the band, we managed to like smooth out the rough edges there, but the first version was like... not good. Just, do I have the right to do that? Is it allowed?
Charles: I created my favorite phrase in the whole history of the band there: "Are we really the only ones equipped with telecommunication?"
Bruno: But there are modifications like that, but that one, it's true it's good. Good alliteration!
Hugo: Personally I've never heard a sound like that.
Bruno: But I don't think a guitar is supposed to sound like that. That's precisely why I chose it. It's the bassist from the band The Locust who, in one of his gear interviews, mentions that there are two in his pedalboard, the purple pedal, and precisely he talks about it like: "It's disgusting and you shouldn't sound like that." And then, I listen to that, I'm like: "I want that!" So I went and got the same pedal, messed around and it's that sound. The green Line 6 pedal with the four buttons. Well, there's a blue one that's for mods and there's a purple one that's for...
Hugo Lachance: Now it's recorded, you have your copyright right there! You caught it at L'Album Podcast.
Bruno: Yes, but it's because it's a multi-effects pedal. Which effect? I'm not telling you, but I don't use much on that pedal.
Hugo Lachance: OK, no but all that to say it sounds really good. I find it cool to have another sonority in rock, which is pretty rare anyway.
Charles: That's it, we pushed the arrogance to release that track as a single when we could have easily found something more catchy.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, but you know, the first time I listened to it, it went... you know, because you listen to the track through your... your brain finds itself a bit unbalanced.
Bruno: It's not normal.
Hugo: I understand the intention?
Charles: There must be people who stop it after the first riff, like: Bleeeh
Hugo Lachance: But the first time I heard that, it was really bizarre, but when you catch it, it's really cool, it works completely. Anything else to add?
Patch: Yes, well the music video on that! That's it, the house hasn't burned down yet, we're good.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, there's a music video on that?
Bruno: We did it with Guillaume Meloche from the band BarbaPapa. We had already pretty much developed the concept together and after that, well that's it, it was done in like three hours, on the hottest day of the summer.
Hugo: Gabrielle, they pushed your patience to the limit!
Gabichou: Quite an experience. It was very cool.
Bruno: She was born for that role! She was really good at it.
Gabichou: But also the fits of laughter. I like it because towards the end, before you burst out laughing, there are things we see... I couldn't take it anymore!
Hugo Lachance: Oh yeah! For sure. The concept is that you do your daily activities and then there's Charles who shows up behind…
Gabichou: It's filmed at my place, in my area. Yeah, I think we did a block there, you know.
Charles: A bit... we went and got ourselves kicked out of Super C! But it's a typical day in the life of Gabichou at Dollarama. The employees were so overworked that we could have filmed longer, but we just did one shot. But yeah, no, but that's still... that's pursuing the tangent of copyright infringement. Did we have filming permits? Not at all! But it's good, it passes through because we know them. Well, we know people. We don't call ourselves Chou for nothing.
Hugo Lachance: Chapter 9: "Rien." We continue with "Rien" precisely. It's my favorite track on the album. There isn't a bad track on this album, honestly. What's the trick?
Bruno: That, there aren't many people who know that I think, the band doesn't know it: I composed it on the scale of the Passe-Partout tracks. No, that's not true! I have no music theory, I don't know what I'm saying.
Hugo: But on that one, the lyrics... for me the lyrics, obviously as a separated parent too, it's pretty mind-blowing: "I swear that with me you're never bored, except that I have the kids, but it's only one weekend out of two." And it's: "Now you're being really nice, did you become the same?" "The babysitter canceled at the last minute." "I apologize, they aren't usually like that." "Go get plugged in, it's a movie we're gonna watch." "Peace, get out of here, it's your fault!" "You won't have a little cat, you won't have a little brother, you'll have nothing." Yeah, that's it... Obviously it's a summary there, but man it's good! And it's good. It still makes me laugh after all this time.
Charles: It's still a subject that is very rarely approached in punk rock.
Hugo: Oh yeah, yeah! But personally I find it fantastic.
Bruno: It's one of the tracks that is the best demonstration of how much fun it is to write with Charles. He came in with the majority of the ideas for this track and you know, it's genius in the sense that nobody has really done that from my perspective: dating and yelling at your kids in a track. You try to be sexy, but do discipline at the same time in an abusive manner. There's such a mismatch between the two. And I find that the instrumental had been done long before. And it's Patch at one point who tells me: "Look, this track is good, you finished?" He forced me. And starting from the bridge, you know that it becomes like progressive almost in terms of structure, and it goes completely somewhere else. It feels like it's another track and after that, we come back with... it's like a sandwich of the beginning of the track that comes back at the end. But I didn't know how to finish and it's really Patch. It's the first track where he said: "Now, the compo is finished." You put your shoulder to the wheel and it works.
Hugo Lachance: Oh yeah, it works completely! And the lyrics are funny because at one point, it's sung... you break character. Like: "Now..." You're forced to break character. The kids refer to that, but musically it's super interesting too.
Charles: Regarding the lyrics, at the beginning Bruno already had the idea to just make a chorus that's bickering threats to a kid, but adding the date on top, that's where it like took off comically.
Bruno: Because we were stuck with a bit of a sexy, languid riff. It was like: "What do you do in the part where you yell at your kids?" Because I knew the riff was: "You won't get a present, you won't get dessert, you'll get nothing." That, I knew, but I had nothing else. And then, it's Charles who goes: "Well that, that, that we could do that."
Charles: I came in with the first phrase and we laughed: "I swear that with me you're never bored, except when I have the kids." When I have the kids, it's boring as hell because I'm always pissed off. It's like an admission. We admit defeat at the beginning of the date.
Hugo Lachance: It's truly rock for adults.
Bruno: It's dad rock!
Charles: Dad rock! It's a redefinition of dad rock. Yeah, it's good. The imagination is good.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, no that's it. Anything else to add on that?
Gabichou: It was the most complicated track for me on drums. Because it's so square, so super precise. Every tom fill is... it's one of the tracks where I breathed the least and I was really not well before recording it in the studio. To the point where it's really rigid.
Hugo Lachance: You're right, I had noticed your drumming in there. Yeah, it's really beautiful.
Gabichou: I really have to be super focused when I play it because precisely, it's so like divided all the time, and I really have to make sure to hit the right things at the same time because I can't miss a beat on that.
Hugo Lachance: OK. Have you guys started road-testing it? Is it already done?
Charles: A long time ago! We had like four left to test that we never really played live, but now we're pretty much ready for the launch.
Hugo Lachance: OK. In your shows, you already majorly do tracks from the Blanc album.
Bruno: "Rien," I redid it in Mario Paint. At first it was a joke and Charles thought I couldn't do it.
Hugo: What do you mean?
Bruno: Yeah, I punched it all into Mario Paint. The real Mario Paint, because you can make music. I must have been nine or ten when it came out, I don't really know. I'm old, listen.
Hugo Lachance: But imagine, older than you!
Bruno: We're not gonna start fighting. And in the original version, there are no sharps, there are no flats. So you can just really compose in the scale of... in C. Whatever. But that's it, so then I found on the Internet a community that took the sounds, they took the interface, all that. There, you can put sharps and flats. I punched it all manually. And then, I had reached the bridge and it was excessively long and I was doing that on my own time. And at one point, I found there was another open source where there you had copy-paste. I was like: "Oh yes, bring that here!" It was compatible with the version I had already punched. Each instrument manually there! I was able to do copy-pastes and mess around faster. But then, after that, I told myself: "Well then, as long as I'm making the version, I'm gonna try to make the video into a sort of visualizer." Yeah, but the program doesn't look that much like Mario Paint. You don't have the little Mario, the notes don't bounce. So personally, I don't script in Java. And I don't know anyone who scripts in Java. But I messed around for weeks and at one point, I managed to re-patent something. One of my friends came to my place, he made the Mario and the notes that bounce, and I re-messed all the interface so it looked like Mario. That's what became the music video
Hugo Lachance: OK, I haven't seen the video. Congrats, with the time you put in! Go check that out everyone. We continue with Chapter 10: "Tirelire." So "Tirelire," at a time when a block of butter sells for $8.50, seduction becomes a difficult activity for ordinary mortals who can barely pay their rent. Fortunately, the most pop and danceable song on Chou blanc is here to offer you alternative solutions that are a bit... and low-cost in order to impress your soulmate or look really cheap. The moral of the story of "Tirelire": to be completely screwed over by capitalism. That's good. It's really a good track, it grooves.
Bruno: We need Patch because personally, this track, I believe he should get the Governor General's Medal for his bass line. Yes, yes! Phenomenal work.
Hugo: Leave the kids alone, Patch!
Bruno: Yeah, well that's it, because I was talking about the quality of your bass line. I don't know if you just played in Chou.
Patch: Oh yes that's true, I forget! Who told you already? If I call the...
Charles: The best idea: we're gonna record a podcast while there are four kids in the house. That, that would be crazy! Is that your concept? That should have been the music video for "Rien."
Bruno: We've reached three tracks. Well listen, it's one of the tracks where it's the bass that starts. Yeah, and the bass line on that, man...
Patch: Well there's a lot of material, it moves around a bit all over the place. It's a line I really like because each of the verses is different regarding the bass line. So that, it's really interesting. Opening it up too... it started from I don't really know where compared to its melody, and then I went on a trip. And in the studio, I think it's David, we had thought about putting some... not flanger, but chorus.
Charles: No, not chorus, but you had done that too with the intro on the first album. A dynamic guy there! You did the same thing. Always a track that you open with the bass and we do... we just say: "Make us an intro that actually makes sense."
Patch: It's B3 bass. It's Leslie!
Hugo Lachance: Chapter 11: "Pythons chauds." Hey, that's Chou right there! How's the crew? I saw you guys were gonna release an album, that's fun man! I haven't listened yet though. You guys doing a show soon? Keep me posted. I'll try to drop by, but I promise nothing. I spend a fair amount of time on my cell, it's still cool. So "Pythons chauds," that's the logical suite of Chou.
Charles: Yeah, well it's a bit of the same kind there, the relationship artist-public with people who don't give a shit. In fact, it's the internal conversations with my dad. Explain, it's good anyway!
Bruno: Yeah, we had never put our finger on it, but that's exactly it. That's where it comes from.
Charles: My dad always says, you know: "Is it going well with your group?" It's always very surface discussions. Yeah, you wanna hear a song? "Ah no, no, that's fine."
Hugo: But it's not just my dad, it seems to be pretty general as a conversation with people, colleagues.
Bruno: When you have a band, you hear that. Oh yeah, it's clear! It's the theme song of your band.
Hugo: Yeah, it's the kind of thing where you answer over time: "It's fine, yes it's fine, it's perfect."
Hugo Lachance: Why the title "Pythons chauds"?
Bruno: I don't know if we talked about it in the other interview, but personally I like to ramble, especially on that one.
Hugo: You're good at rambling!
Bruno: When you ramble, especially on that anecdote... I managed to say it again a little bit to... talk there! You took two sips of beer on top of it. Yeah, that's it. On our music video for Chou, the track starts with: "Python chaud." And YouTube, in the automatic subtitles, it just wrote: "Python chaud." Oh yeah! From the start, you know as we said, Hot Snakes was our source of inspiration, so: Pythons chauds, Hot Snakes. Are there connections everywhere?
Hugo Lachance: Well yes! It's fourth degree.
Charles: The mille-feuilles of Chou!
Hugo Lachance: But no, beyond that, we were also talking that it's your assumed Lucien Francœur influence, always.
Charles: There's always a monologue side that jumps in. I did it on two tracks basically on the Blanc album. And well that's it, when we don't find it funny anymore, we're gonna stop doing it.
Hugo Lachance: No, personally I find that it works, those connections. Personally I was really happy when I heard that, but I asked myself the question: why didn't you open the album with that?
Charles: Because... you know, I found that the other album opened very quietly with "Chou." There is still a sequence of tracks all the time. "ben Rock," it makes an intermission.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, exact! It marks a pause.
Charles: It feels like there are no calm moments on the album, but this one is still one relatively,
Hugo: A little bit 50s style.
Bruno: It's Offspring that had an intermission that was: "Time to relax." I've never listened to that band, but you're not missing much because that intermission isn't even a track of his. In any case, I haven't listened either.
Bruno: Well you're not missing much either!
Hugo Lachance: But we greet all our Offspring fans! I laughed when you say: "Is it still a girl drumming for you?"
Charles: Yeah, but I've already heard that. I've already heard that said, for real. We said at the beginning to joke that Gab's drumming was surprising for a girl, not that it's degrading, and I don't know if it's like a sexist comment, someone who doesn't even realize they're being sexist.
Bruno: We hear it at almost every show: "Your drummer there, she's good! And not just good for a girl." You look at him and you're like: "You could have just not spoken, it would've been better!"
Hugo: Yeah, I admit those are fucking useless comments, even if there's no bad intention.
Bruno: The worst part is the comment leaves their mouth and it feels like they realize: "Oh, man am I an idiot!" Well yeah, you're an idiot!
Hugo: How do you feel about that, Gabrielle?
Gabichou: Personally, uhhhhh yes!
Hugo: I've had better answers than that.
Gabichou: But already, this track, what I like a lot is that I really layered more percussion. For that, I found it very cool.
Bruno: There's salsa on that. She did all the percussion, even the vibra-slap.
Gabichou: Yes! Yes, I even played the salt shaker. There was a salt shaker in the studio. I played cowbell at the start: "Crazy Train"!
Charles: Oh yeah! Exact. It's supposed to imitate the cry of an ox, like. Yeah, there's a Wikipedia page on that. It's supposed to imitate a kind of animal cry. You went on the Wikipedia page of the vibra-slap?
Bruno: Yes, I did that. I did that, I didn't even ask ChatGPT!
Hugo Lachance: Wow! Ah but as you say, it marks a nice pause in the album. We continue with "Barré du Couche-Tard." Chapter 12: "Barré du Couche-Tard." The most typically punk song of this second opus, "Barré du Couche-Tard" was first thought of as a playful homage to the Pioneers of Montreal crossover: les flocons givrés. Charles draws inspiration from a job interview he experienced at the start of the century to imagine himself incapable of setting foot in the most famous Quebec convenience store franchise.
Charles: Yeah, but that theme, the job interview theme, I come back to it fucking often with Chou. You know, I had never made the connection before there, but there are two tracks back-to-back where that's the subject: going for an interview. It's a source of inspiration too.
Bruno: On the first EP: my application for the position of editor-in-chief of Urbania Musique.
Charles: Yeah, no, that's it, but it makes me laugh a lot because I always feel fucking out of phase when I do a job interview there. And you know, when they ask you why you want to work for us? To pay my rent! It's super absurd. But the whole side of "Barré du Couche-Tard" came from the fact that... you know, there was "Barré des Foufs," and I had shown that to Bruno.
Bruno: But I think it was for the Rose EP, we were checking what track we could cover, if I'm not mistaken. You made me listen to that track. I listened to it and I went: "Well no, but it's interesting, but no." And then it germinated. And then I don't know what it was... it was the thing that JB got banned, I don't know anymore.
Charles: But no, it's because of "Barré des Foufs." We told ourselves: "What is more punk than getting banned from a punk bar? Well it's getting banned from a convenience store franchise!"
Hugo: But musically too, well it's obviously the typical fun punk track.
Bruno: I tried to make the riff as goofy as possible.
Gabrielle: It's the first one we tracked too. Finally, Patch, you call it the "Playmobil" track, but no!
Patch: The first one we did was "Attention." That one was the first one we finished road-testing.
Charles: Ah, maybe, that's possible. But in fact, since it's short, I think the first take was good. When we listened at the console, we told ourselves that it worked. OK it's tac tac tac, OK it's good! But congrats, it's really cool.
Bruno: Anything else to add?
Patch: Yes and no. I want to throw a little flower because well, I had to leave a couple times... In fact, just to come back real quick to "Pythons chauds" then we were talking about Charles' narrative. I wanted to throw him a flower because there's a way... personally it impresses me when he walks into the studio and gets behind a mic to sing. You know, sometimes a singer will try to immerse themselves in a mood, but for him it's immediate.
Hugo Lachance: Oh yeah, OK.
Bruno: A monster and then it takes off!
Patch: I don't know how he does it to be angry or arrogant or just amusing all the time. Tac tac tac! I don't know how he does it.
Hugo: You missed your calling!
Charles: It's not the first time I've been told that. "You, your face there, you should really be an actor."
Patch: Yet he hates the camera.
Charles: Yeah I don't like it. But the camera, what do you want me to tell you? But the worst part is the segments style Lucien Francœur like in "Pythons chauds." That's me, when I made the demo, I tried to imitate the kind of delivery of Francœur. It's pitiful! It doesn't work. But him, he hears it, and then he sings in his own way and it sticks.
Hugo: Charles the personality. But you have the voice too. You have a deep throat!
Well thanks… I guess!
Hugo Lachance: We continue with our next excerpt.
Chapter 13: Ça plombe [Music]
Gabichou: That is the perfect example of what Bruno was saying earlier: "no no no, I don't want to play that, you're crazy out of your mind." After that, it's like: "it's my favorite and I do it faster than anything you asked me."
Bruno: That track, initially, is because she made me that beat.
Gabichou: I said: "make me a track please where there's a part where I do a part." She played that, I said we'd have to make a track with that, but then he's like: "ok." He makes a whole track with that beat.
Hugo Lachance: It's like a double but with the floor tom, that's it, yes. A descriptor I could give is that you guys are truly each in your place. You worked together, composed together, and it shows because each person brings something to the track. Your bass is truly mind-blowing, and the guitar too.
Charles: For the vocals, personally I have a big soft spot for Bruno's vocal performances on the album. He gives it his all.
Bruno: That one, in "I held my breath in the elevator," it's because I was re-listening to tracks from my old band Sound Asleep and in Barbeo Azure, there's a tone of voice I take that I'm like: "damn, I never do that in Chou." And then, when the time came, I went: "ok, I'm bringing that out," and it pays off. Live, I have fun screaming like that, and the next ones, I want to do it more. Bruno, I can't scream louder than that, I can't have a delivery more at the maximum. It feels good, it's therapeutic for real. I recommend to anyone to have a rock band and scream like that just to...
Charles: It's worth enduring all the negative sides.
Patch: You're right, when I listen to what we did in the studio and I look at each and every one, we really all gave it our all. Gab focused. Personally I call her my combine harvester. Was that given to someone else? No, she's the combine harvester, it's not the other one. And Charles, every time, he always shows up toc toc toc, the emotion is always there. Bruno is super perfectionist, he doesn't leave the studio until the note is in the right place.
Hugo Lachance: You can tell you guys had fun making this album and you can't wait to do it live.
Bruno: That track, the first demo we made for vocals, Charles and I, it was the perfect example that we are truly numbskulls. We showed up there and we were screaming like goblins. It sounded like the last album of Thee Oh Sees. Among ourselves, we thought we were funny, and then we made the band listen to it and they said: "no." I re-listen and I go: "ok, yeah, no." We tried to do better.
Patch: I didn't know the first version.
Bruno: That's your brain doing denial because you heard it!
Charles: You went: "what is that, how are you singing, why are you singing like that?"
Patch: But it wasn't the "spaghetti sauce" track, it was that one.
Charles: "Respire dans l'ascenseur," it wasn't good. We found it fucking funny, but the next morning, I got up, re-listened to it and went: "yeah, it's not great." We really had the same reaction.
Charles: Except earlier, on the way here, we told each other that on the next EP, Ew! there has to be a track where we scream like...
Bruno: Stop spoiling it for people! But in our upcoming works. It's not even the next EP, it's in two EPs.
Hugo Lachance: Oh yeah, ok. You heard it here on L'Album Podcast. We're gonna continue with "Pain."
Chapter 14: Pain
Charles: "I live every day as if it were my last, you can be damn sure I'm not doing the dishes. Pigeons eat cigarette butts, but at least they're free. I eat dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. I savor the irony of dinosaurs becoming birds that become dinosaurs. All the things I've thought about but never done: 'I should eat in the bathtub.'"
Gabichou: That one comes from my own doing. It's the only line I have on the album.
Bruno: The line initially was "I would've eaten out of your hand," and she misheard it as "I should eat in the bathtub." We went: "oh!", because it fit even better than what we had originally written.
Charles: It was like a completely irrelevant romantic text, and then that happened, and it was really good. It's like someone with severe mental and eating disorders reflecting on the cycle of life. Dinosaurs die, they're extinct, but they become birds because of evolution.
Hugo: There are some real gems in that sentence.
Bruno: Personally, it had always been a fantasy of mine to start a track with "that's it." When someone runs out of arguments, that's what they're gonna say: "that's it."
Charles: We had fun with this track from A to Z. Right from the start, we were sitting around the table at Gab's place, and it was practically a contest of who could write the most useless sentence.
Bruno: Writing tracks for Chou is basically following Charles around with a notepad. It was a dump of all the things he inspired me to write or said. It didn't start from the title, but we knew for a long time we wanted to call it "Pain." We didn't know if it was "pain" (as in bread) or "pain" (as in suffering) like in metal, Nu Metal. The concept of "pain" keeps coming back. We call it "Pain," but people are gonna think it's about bread.
Charles: On the way to Quebec City, we were listening to Korn, or it was that track by Sevendust. Sometimes we go on Nu Metal trips in the car. It was planned for it to sound a bit Nu Metal. The more it goes, the more I come back to that. I'm a child of Nu Metal.
Bruno: We understand why we're gonna make an album called... there's a certain vibe we want to go after. We grew up with toys that were slime and questionable things. There's a part of us we need to feel once in a while, it does us good. For this track, instrumentally, I dropped down into Drop D. The kind of riff that comes out in those times is Helmet style. I blended Helmet with Vision of Disorder, I liked that kind of riff.
Gabichou: For a long time it was instrumental, and it was my favorite track. When we added lyrics, the rhythm section was like: "there are too many vocals, there's too much text, it's talking all the time, Charles can you actually sing a bit?" Charles' response was: "huh, that's it."
Hugo Lachance: That's awesome. We continue with "Trio-Tang."
Chapter 15: Trio-Tang (J'envoie des messages)
Charles: "Trio-Tang, I'm sending messages. In the beginning it was envelopes, I wanted to keep it under control, I didn't want it to derail. I'm always at the post office." It's the sequel to "Duo-Tang," I imagine.
Hugo Lachance: And there you go, you figured it all out! I investigated for a long time.
Charles: "You're gonna act like less of a smart-aleck with a leg in a cast and a doctor's note."
Gabichou: That's Bruno, I have no doubt about it.
Bruno: It's one of the tracks where, except for the chorus, I'm the one who composed it. I showed up with a fully finished track. On the first album, there was some... and for a while, playing it live wasn't that thrilling. When we did it at West Shefford, it blew up. It was by far the track I had the most fun playing. I have less work on guitar and Charles takes the lead a bit more. I told myself that on the new album, I wanted one where I sing lead.
Charles: We were in Drop D too. There was a hole in the album, something missing, and when it arrived, it was exactly what was missing. On the first album, there was the character of Nick Melançon who pees himself at the end. There's a part of me that wants to keep this character who is both paranoid and sure of himself, to the point where he thinks he's untouchable. It's trying to see the foolishness that comes out of this character, thinking he can outsmart everything and making threats to anyone. It's making a truly deranged portrait. The text is disjointed, but it's in that spirit.
Bruno: In show, it's fun. I let go of my guitar and I softly sing lyrics that make no sense.
Hugo Lachance: You don't play guitar at all during the verses?
Bruno: No. Saying "when I die, I'm taking you with me" while singing it very softly is peculiar. It's an uncomfortable track. Sometimes in a show, it breaks the rhythm, but it stays good because the track is unhinged. It's a moment that's fun, just to let loose.
Gabichou: For me, it's the moment I hate the most because it was by far the hardest Chou track to learn. I had to learn to count every single drum measure. Bruno had to make me a 7/8 chart. When we do it in a show, I just think about counting to make sure I land right, so I don't get lost. Patch absolutely has to be locked on me the whole time. When I derail, and it happened last time, I have to keep counting to catch up. To complete what she's saying, it sounds like it's in 4/4, but if you count, you'll be surprised.
Hugo Lachance: I would lose my mind doing math while playing!
Gabichou: It's a signature that is always there, but it's remembering by heart the variations of 7/8, 7/8, 7/8, and then oh, it's a 5/8, and then a 6/8 pause. Learning all that by heart was painful. But I'm happy because you have no choice but to try that. Playing in 4/4 all the time, it's another color when you change time signatures.
Charles: So far, when we do it in a show, it stirs things up in the crowd. There's something people don't understand, so they push the guy next to them. It works like that, and it's the challenge of making something groove that isn't in a normal beat.
Bruno: Plus, I played the scissors. If you listen to the album, the verses are a nod to my friend Claudia. Those are big scissors you hear. There's also a Korn influence in the bridge. We're moving on with "Doux comme un agneau."
Chapter 16: Doux comme un agneau
Charles: "When I was 17, the girl from school came to ask me if I liked Six Feet Under. I enthusiastically replied that the first two albums were completely insane. At the moment, I hadn't noticed that she had already started walking away."
Patch: Instrumentally, that's my track. I liked it because there's a little Dry Cleaning side to the way it's composed.
Charles: Bruno liked the title "Doux comme un agneau," so I started telling a story that happened to me for real when I was in CEGEP, though I was closer to 19 than 17. For people who don't know, Six Feet Under is the band Chris Barnes from Cannibal Corpse started after. The TV show is older than the band—I checked the date—and I couldn't have been 17, so I changed it to 19. 17 just sounds better.
Hugo Lachance: It's cool the way you talk about those things in your delivery.
Charles: We came up with the idea at the pizzeria before going to jam.
Bruno: The guitar was composed by Patch and I had to learn his riff as faithfully as possible. I didn't have the right guitar tone for it to work, so I had to change my entire rig, rethink my gain stage and the fuzz pedals I was using. I changed my gear mainly because of this track. It still sounds like Chou, but I'm able to get a Dinosaur Jr.-style fuzz. It expanded my sonic territory.
Hugo Lachance: It shows, there's a research in the sound all throughout the album. Every track has a different sound.
Patch: It's the first track I composed from start to finish for Chou.
Charles: For a long time, it was called "J'étais une grosse merde" (I was a piece of shit). I really wanted that title because if I see that in a tracklist, I'm gonna go listen to it. Finally, we went back to "Doux comme un agneau." I added the riff with the idea that he was gonna yell "j'étais une grosse merde." It's better to have a track called "Doux comme un agneau" and at the end it says "I was a piece of shit, but right now I'm actually real nice."
Charles: For Catherine Jeanne-D'Arc, I wanted a voice that responds, because it's a guy talking to himself but he doesn't even realize it since he's so absorbed in his story. Cat did a damn good job. There's a little telephone effect in there. We continue with "Péter toute."
Chapter 17: Péter toute
Charles: "Smashing everything, it's been annoying me for months, and now I'm at my wits' end. That's what happens when you don't sleep. I won't have the strength not to smash everything."
Bruno: That one is a leftover from the first album. It's the track that has the least consensus within the band. Three-quarters of the band didn't want us to do it, but when we got to the studio, it was one of the most intense moments of the recording. It took everything out of Gabichou because we hadn't really rehearsed it. Being a bit demanding, I said: "no no, we're recording it right now." We were on the third day of recording, we were starting to get tired, and it's not the easiest track to play.
Hugo Lachance: I think it's raw drumming, it's just straight-up smashing.
Bruno: That's why I insisted we do it. Live, it's gonna be a really thrilling moment. It's a return to the roots, it's very Hot Snakes in the style of the riff.
Charles: At the end, I realize my childhood Korn dream. I'm transforming into all the... from Korn. At first, Bruno was talking about a personal situation and there was no humor. I understand we need meat on the bone, so we shook everything up. It turned into the story of someone calling Videotron and losing their patience: "put your boss on, I'm gonna try to calm down." I even do some scatting at the end.
Hugo Lachance: Bravo. We move on to "Offrande aux dieux de l'indifférence la plus totale."
Chapter 18: Offrande aux dieux de l'indifférence la plus totale
Charles: "I spent 20 minutes on the line for 8-1-1, finally they told me to go to the ER. I'm not stupid, I've been there before, I don't want to go back. The symptoms are becoming overwhelming: when I cough there's blood, when I blow my nose there's blood, when I pee there's blood. Looks like it's coming to an end."
Bruno: It's the least listenable track. For a long time, it was called "Il y a du sang" (There's blood). As a joke, we tell ourselves that the second-to-last track on an album is the one nobody gives a shit about and everyone skips. I wanted to make the most abrasive version possible. The band didn't want this track at first.
Charles: When he showed up with that after "Je fais attention," I said: "does that mean every track is gonna have that effect?" I wasn't sure. Finally, we found a way to twist it. We don't give a shit because, as the title indicates, it's an offering to indifference. If you listen to a band you don't know and nothing catches your attention, that's when you wonder what's going on. We haven't done it live yet, it'll be for the launch. The riff reaches for something that shouldn't be allowed.
Hugo Lachance: Are you gonna be able to reproduce those sounds live?
Bruno: I've passed to the dark side, I'm entirely on a digital modeler. All the pedals and effects I have on the album, I have them on stage via XLR. What you hear on the album is what you get live. I had enough of tube amps shitting out during a show. Now, I have something reliable. For the second verse, we called Simon from Goudron, who is the best person to talk about suffering and mortality. What he did for us is intense, it's as violent as the riff. Charles is able to pick up his text and scream like an angry goblin.
Hugo Lachance: It's not easy to sing like Simon. We move on to the last track of the album.
Chapter 19: Vraiment pas pire
Charles: "I'm just glad to tell you that things are really better, I was a piece of shit, we could see each other if you feel like it."
Bruno: It's one of my favorites in terms of the text. It talks about artists who get canceled and try to make a comeback by saying: "I've really done some work on myself, I went to see a therapist, I stopped drinking." It's a parody of that movement. It almost got called "Weekend at Bernie's" for reasons we won't disclose here.
Charles: Resurrecting the corpse! The idea is that it makes a happy ending. It sounds a bit like Supergrass. The guy goes through nightmare phases and ends up saying things are better. It's a good track to understand how well the drums sound throughout the album.
Bruno: As soon as we put out this track, I knew "Il va y avoir des morts" would be the first and this one the last. We just had to fill the middle.
Hugo Lachance: We went through the whole album! What are your projects?
Bruno: We need to work on booking, on new music, we can't rest on our laurels. Eventually, I'd like to do another covers EP, like Rose. We have three or four tracks we'd like to cover, but it costs money and we wonder if it's the best investment, since the royalties go to the original bands.
Charles: We're already working on the next EP, we're gonna go into the Horrorcore side with sounds a punk band isn't supposed to have. We're gonna push that to the extreme. Some people are gonna press stop and say Chou is crap. That's the objective. It's fun to reinvent ourselves. With the Blanc album, it wasn't planned to turn out like that, but we found a common thread and all the tracks stick together.
Hugo Lachance: It's a concept album, I love it. Hoping you don't get too many lawsuits with the cover.
Patch: If The Beatles sue us, we're definitely making it onto Tout le monde en parle!
Hugo Lachance: Thank you Charles, Gabichou, Patch, and Bruno. The launch is October 17th at the Cabaret des Foufs. Thanks to Hopéra who sponsored the episode. See you next time for another episode of L'Album Podcast.