Coeur de pirate, Commodore Ballroom, Saturday, Sept. 19 at 9 p.m. Tickets available from ticketmaster.ca.
Roses, an Old French word that works perfectly well in English, is what Coeur de pirate (Québécoise singer-songwriter Béatrice Martin) has decided to call her new album.
She composed and sings seven of the 11 songs on the recording in English with the other four in her native French. While Martin has worked in English before Roses is a courageous leap into the creative unknown for the 25-year-old Montréal musician.
Coeur de pirate recorded the majority of the album with producer Björn Yttling (Lykke Li, Chrissie Hynde, Peter, Bjorn and John) in Stockholm and also worked with Rob Ellis (P.J. Harvey) and Ash Workman on a couple of tracks each. The result is a seamless pop record that moves effortlessly between French chanson and English tunes.
Martin spoke to the North Shore News earlier this week just before she unveiled the new songs live at Métropolis as part of the week-long POP Montréal festival. Tomorrow night she's at the Commodore Ballroom.
North Shore News: Growing up in Montréal did you have much contact with English culture?
Béatrice Martin: I went to kindergarten in English - all my TV and stories were in English. That was great because I got immersed in it pretty quickly.
North Shore News: Was that the equivalent of French immersion?
Béatrice Martin: Yea, it's really weird basically my preschool was in English and then I went to a normal Québéc school where they only start teaching English when you're in fourth grade.
North Shore News: At home, outside of school, did you speak English at all?
Béatrice Martin: Not really no. I would watch TV and movies but otherwise it was just me.
North Shore News: How about now outside your professional life?
Béatrice Martin: Yes, I have friends who speak English and sometimes with my parents a little bit and I have family in Vancouver. My aunt married a journalist from B.C. and they live out there. We all speak English and French.
North Shore News: Your first foray into working in English was the Trauma soundtrack. How did that come about?
Béatrice Martin: The TV show approached me to do it. Conceptually each season they would ask an artist to just do covers for a whole season and it was great.
(Coeur de pirate recorded 12 songs for the soundtrack to the fifth season of the Canadian TV series Trauma including the McGarrigle sisters' "Heartbeats Accelerating," Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" and Amy Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good.")
North Shore News: Did you choose the material that you sang?
Béatrice Martin: Most of it and then some of the songs were chosen.
North Shore News: So they had significance for you personally?
Béatrice Martin: All the songs that I chose marked me growing up. And other artists just inspired me like Tom Waits and The Libertines. It's all stuff that I listened to.
North Shore News: When you're writing your own material how do you decide when one's should be in English? Is it a conscious process?
Béatrice Martin: Not really. It's like when you speak English you think in English. It's like if I'm writing in English I will think in English. It's not like I translate - it starts in that language.
North Shore News: Do you have a specific process you follow when you compose?
Béatrice Martin: Usually I will record a melody on my phone - it can happen anywhere - I can have it while walking and thinking and then I try to find the chords and then I will write a text. That's usually how it goes.
North Shore News: So the music comes first?
Béatrice Martin: Always.
North Shore News: How do you approach the words to a song?
Béatrice Martin: It depends on how I'm feeling at that moment - if there's a story I need to tell and if there's something that happened I need to get it off my chest. Usually it will come naturally if I have something on my mind I will usually write it out fairly quickly.
North Shore News: Does performing in English change how you approach the music conceptually?
Béatrice Martin: Yes the tone changes when I write in English which is kind of funny. The tone in French is much more nostalgic as opposed to the tone in English where it's more direct. I don't know if it's just new to me and I'm relatively new at writing in English but it was interesting to see how that changed things.
North Shore News: Is it more difficult or does it feel like a natural progression?
Béatrice Martin: I think I will get used to it. I'm not used to singing in English so it's a little bit harder live but maybe it's just a matter of placing my voice when I sing in English.
North Shore News: You also chose to work with three different producers on Roses (Björn Yttling, Ash Workman and Rob Ellis). How was that?
Béatrice Martin: It was great. I got to work with people I have admired my whole life so it was really really cool to see them work. I just gave them carte blanche to do whatever they wanted with the songs.
North Shore News: Did you bring finished songs to them or did they get worked on during the sessions?
Béatrice Martin: The demos were finished. They arranged. The structure and the melody was done. It was like over the span of six months maybe but it was on and off. I would go for like three weeks in Stockholm and then come back and then two weeks in London.
North Shore News: You have a major presence in France. Do you find any difference in the European scene?
Béatrice Martin: The French music scene is really something because it's very mixed. What works over there probably won't work over here and vice versa. It's very weird we have country music as well country music does very poorly in France. It's really fascinating - I've learned a lot.
North Shore News: After Roses in my iTunes comes Colin Stetson's and Sarah Neufeld's album. It made a great juxtaposition of music from Montréal-based musicians. Do you feel part of a musical community?
Béatrice Martin: It's funny a lot of musicians come to Montreal because it's very low rent and it's very cheap to create in Montreal as opposed to going to New York or other cities. I think that's a part of it. It's a small town and we kind of all know each other and get influenced by what the other person's doing. I like to think I'm part of that multicultural aspect of a bohemian town.
