Summer school

>> Montreal’s Pas Chic Chic take
a crash course in pop

KEEPING IT SIMPLE: Pas Chic Chic

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“We kinda like to challenge ourselves and put ourselves in situations where we’re gonna be uncomfortable,” says Roger Tellier-Craig, the frontman for Pas Chic Chic. He’s referring to having recently played in front of several thousand people at the St-Viateur street festival, and to another impending outdoor gig at Francofolies. Although he’s been part of such esteemed bands as godspeed you! black emperor, Fly Pan Am, Set Fire to Flames and Et Sans, the pop arc of Pas Chic Chic is new for him, and even more so for his friend and DJ partner, singer Marie-Douce St. Jacques.

“I never wrote a song in my life before Pas Chic Chic and I’d never been in front of people with just a microphone in my hand, but Marie has never sung or played an instrument in front of people so there’s this awkwardness that we’ve confronted. You’ve just gotta train yourself, just put on those shoes and wear them, wear them out.”

Tellier-Craig’s other bandmates, guitarist Radwan Moumneh, bassist Eric Gingras and drummer Eric Filion, are equally up for the challenge, particularly Filion, who recently brought the band to play a surprise show in front of his former students at Sacred Heart, a private Catholic girls’ high school in Westmount.

“That was an awkward show,” reports Tellier-Craig, “completely straight up, no alcohol, nothing. We played at 8 in the morning—we had to do the set-up the night before and show up at 6:30 a.m. to make sure nobody saw us come in. Nobody knew, except the principal and the concierge.”

Yet there’s something to be said for playing outside the usual 20- and 30-something demographic. The entire crowd was either 12–17 or over 40, and almost entirely female. And it was especially important for Filion, a longtime history teacher who recently left the faculty to focus on music.

“It was a really good experience for Eric, which is why we wanted to do it, and everybody was pretty positive [about the music].”

The same can be said for the critical and public reaction to the band’s independently released debut single, “Sur les écrans statiques,” an effervescent burst of pop reminiscent of France in the ’60s and, to some degree, England in the ’90s. But with only two songs available to the public, and relatively stripped-down live arrangements, Tellier-Craig feels that people will learn a lot about Pas Chic Chic when they release their LP, hopefully by the end of the year.

“The thing about the record is that everything is pop, there are no abstract pieces, but there are abstract elements to the pieces that we don’t really involve in the live setting. The idea is to keep it simple and to not try and reproduce the record because it really wouldn’t make any sense, and I’ve done that in the past and it always sounds like shit. We want to make it more about stage presence, the way we interact with each other.

“There’s psychedelic, there’s musique concrète, there’s a mish-mash of styles,” he adds. “I definitely want to move more into the psychedelic realm and even have more acoustic guitar and synths and shit. We’re not gonna sit in one place.”

With Vanishing Indoors and DJ Bartek
Komorowski at Casa del Popolo on
Saturday, June 23, 9 p.m., $10