Ripped from
the script

>> Kid Sentiment is Quebec’s first rock ’n’ roll
teen movie band (minus the movie)

SCREEN DREAM: Kid Sentiment

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

From the creators of les Séquelles and les Macchabées comes a new rock ’n’ roll band ready to shake up the nation: Kid Sentiment! Local label Méga-Fiable presents Le rock ’n’ roll est un bâtard, a mini-album coming to a record store near you.

“I was writing the script for a movie and it was a story about a band,” says Stéphane Plante. “It’s really inspired by Rock ’n’ Roll High School, which was inspired by teen movies from the ’50s and ’60s. I’ve never seen that type of movie from Quebec, so I thought, ‘Let’s be the first one, the first rock ’n’ roll teen movie.’”

After the break-up of Plante’s two bands, those ’60s mod and garage revivalists extraordinaire, he and his longtime bandmate Jean Masson were itching to delve into something new. Plante became so enamoured with his script that he decided to put the excruciatingly slow film production process aside and bring the band to life instead. And so a new musical family was born, adopting “Sentiment” as surnames, à la Ramones. “But I swear, the movie will be released one day,” says Plante.

That project is on hold for the moment, and untitled, though the band Kid Sentiment is named after an experimental Québécois film from the late ’60s, directed by Jacques Godbout and starring François Guy and Louis Parizeau, two members of this province’s garage-punk granddaddies, les Sinners.

“I saw François Guy in the crowd at Francofolies, at the Plasticine show,” says Plante. “I almost told him.”

The ’60s may figure prominently in Kid Sentiment’s aesthetic, but infusions of power pop, punk and Britpop bring new tones to their sound. Plante credits the ’77-punk power of the rhythm section (Sweetheart Sebastian and Martin Blackburn from les Vautours), along with Masson’s Cure/Smiths pedal stylings, with quashing any purist tendencies. And although he still writes the lyrics, he no longer looks to one man for inspiration.

“I used to be really influenced by Gainsbourg—I was obsessed with him,” he says. “I still like his stuff, but I needed to take a little distance to write something more personal.”

CD launch and video premiere at Divan Orange on
Tuesday, Nov. 27, 5–7 p.m., show at 9:30 p.m., $5