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Double vie >> The two faces of Jérôme Minière
by CHRIS YURKIW
Maybe not, if they're a young singer-songwriter bolstered by a new tool in the sampler. And especially not if they're Jérôme Minière, a 25-year-old French emigré who's not just what you would call, in English, a singer-songwriter, but a new kind of chansonnier--that term loaded with a nationalistic pride of form in France. It's not that Minière is done with words in his short career. In fact, his intimate words and their skewed meter are becoming even more important in songs with a vocal delivery resembling that of rap. But those are the songs with words, which can be found on the first disc of his second album and double set La nuit éclaire le jour qui suit, on Lithium. The second disc, while not all that different from the tracks that back his voice in their electro-breaks minimalism, is instrumental, and if the whole affair is not quite on par with Dylan going electric it's surely as profound a shift. "For the marketing of the album it's terrible," says Minière, who's been living in Montreal for four years now. "It's not something that fans expect from the Lithium label, and then other people who might be into the electronic side of it don't really hear about it. It's a kind of Frankenstein or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but you could also see it as a kind of utopian project of putting these two things together. The producer nixed the idea at first but then changed his mind. In the end he thought it could be a really cool and unique thing. "Music has evolved with the sensibilities of the day, and also with technology. But I'm not obsessed with machines. Last year, when I was recording the album, I was obsessed with my [new] sampler, but now I'm looking for an integration of traditional instruments and digital technology. I think a group like Tortoise does that really well and gets a lot of texture out of it. It's more like sculpting--literally--the sounds. "The sampler's been around for about 10 years now, and it's becoming more and more integrated with traditional instruments. Today, you don't have to be for or against a new tool like that." After Minière's first album, 1996's Monde pour n'importe qui, there was a rift between the sound of the album (spare, electronic) and his live show, which was done up with a trad rock band. But even though he's found someone to "take care of the machines" on stage for that integration he talks about, Minière plans to keep his two musical tendencies separate in the future. And shuttling between two continents is nice, but that too exacts a price. "It gives me a reason to travel back and forth," says Minière of his Montreal home and largely European career, "but sometimes it's strange. Last year I was in Europe for five months and after a while it's a little disorienting. At a certain point you have to make a choice."
At Cabaret with Hashimoto, Friday, June 18, 8:30pm, $10+taxes |
Why would someone taking part in the vaunted tradition of the singer-songwriter want to give up words? How could they forsake that half of the equation that allows them to create literal images, to communicate concrete thoughts? Wouldn't they be nothing without that tool?