Monsieur H cherche Madame X

>> Mesdames et messieurs, Arthur H

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

The Francofolies festival, which rolls through Montreal every year, tips its beret to every corner of the francophone world--Belgium and Quebec, Morocco and Senegal and France, France, France. Booked for five shows and a DJ set this year is the distinguished Arthur H, who could fill the France quotient all by his lonesome.

Comparisons to the late Serge Gainsbourg (and perhaps Tom Waits with a shave) are inevitable. There's the weary, gravelly vocal style they share, the theatrical, elegantly sleazy wordplay and, of course, the ears. God, the ears. Fishy physical indicators aside, Arthur is in fact the offspring of another French pop icon, Jacques Higelin, but these days the son shines brightest.

As I said, Monsieur H is as French as all get out. Consider his 1996 album, Trouble-Fête--if the man had a franc for each time he uttered the words "le Tour Eiffel," he could buy the Château Versailles. But he doesn't, so his fourth and most recent release, the amazing Pour Madame X, was recorded in slightly more downscale digs--read on.

While drawing on music from many cultures and eras, from casbahs and cabarets, comic books and computer terminals, Pour Madame X is very au courant and resolutely Parisian. Yes, even "Indiana Lullaby," a duet with Mexican Montrealista Lhasa de Sela. The balance of detached wit and pained romanticism repeated itself when the Mirror sat down with Arthur for a chat--his carefully articulated answers, each prefaced by a stretch of thoughtful silence, are punctuated by short bursts of roguish laughter.

Mirror: I'm interested in the fact that you chose to record your album not in a regular studio but rather one you created yourself, in an old castle.

Arthur H: The environment can influence you more than you think, when creating music. I wanted an environment that was really close to the atmosphere that I was looking for, so I chose this old castle, which was no Château Versailles. It a rather run-down space. Twenty years ago, it was in ruins, with trees pushing up through the floor. Then some old former leftists, ex-68ers, fixed it up themselves. There was plaster falling on your head, dust everywhere. See, I have to feel comfortable in an informal space--a space that's warm, informal and a little chaotic. That's what's missing in a professional studio--it's too neat and organized. You've got Spock and Captain Kirk on the deck there next to you. You feel like you need an anti-bacteria suit. Music needs chaos, it's not neat and orderly. So I feel comfortable in this kind of environment.

M: I'm curious if you, as a dad, are at all inspired by children's books and stories. I ask this because so much of your music feels a little like fairy tales for adults.

AH: You mean pornographic fairy tales? (laughs) Inevitably, it's the same process, whether you're reading a novel or listening to a story. A part of you becomes a child again. You leave your imagination completely open. The story arrives and it has a side to it that's real. When my grandmother was fairly old and nearly blind, I would get here these books on tape, novels read by well-known actors. After listening to them, she would talk to me about them as though they were real stories, as though it had actually happened. We all often wish that we could rediscover that capacity that children and old people have, to let ourselves be taken over by a story.

Foreign legionnaire

M: On a similar note, I like the way you use so many kinds of music from around the world--respectfully, though not as ethnographic exercises. Rather, you use them to feed your personal mythology, in an informal way.

AH: I have a rather bizarre feeling about certain kinds of world music. It's that I feel an intimacy with them. I don't see them as foreign. For me, a foreigner is something of a mirror, someone who's taken the time to work and discover things that I forgot about or didn't have time to work on. They remind me of these things. So when I hear foreign music like that, music from outside my own sphere, I better understand my own music, what it's missing and what I desire it to be. So there really aren't borders that way, especially in music--it's so much a language that's simple, that we can all share, that's physical and of the senses. I need to refresh my ideas in foreign cultures, to rediscover my own sensibility.

M: Last year, you worked on the soundtrack to the film Les Inséparables. How was that? I ask because your music is very visual, even filmic at times.

AH: I did one song, the rest was all instrumental. I love this record--in fact, it's almost my favourite of my records. But it simply didn't take. Nobody seems to know it. I wanted to do very contemporary music, really of today, but at the same time acoustic and improvisatory, very improvised. I simply proposed a few themes, and we practiced them for only three days, a very short time. Then we recorded for three days and it was done. So it was like jazz, but with music that's more rock, more modern. In its colours, it resembles a band like Tortoise a bit, but it's not really that either. It's a very original record of which I'm very proud--while doing it, I was thinking of it as much as a record as a film.

Crossed channels

M: I find that your lyrics are, for us anglophones with only limited grasp of French, very accessible. That's not to say that they're simple, but that they're active rather than passive, inviting the listener into the world you've created. Do you find that anglos react well to your music?

AH: In general, yes, but I think that underlying that is a widespread lack of curiosity in French music on the part of anglophones. If they hear it it's either by accident, or they're part of this minority that's unusually curious about foreign music, like one finds in every country. But I've always dreamed of travelling with my music, and I travel with it to non-francophone countries. It always goes well. The French lyrics aren't a problem. The problem is more that people there, the record stores and radio stations, for example, aren't really interested. I get a feeling that if I was English and not French, but playing the same music with the same lyrics, I'd be heard around the world. People should be careful not to lose their own particular vibrations, though. There's many in Europe who sing in English, or change the sound of their language, to push themselves closer to the American sound. To me, that's an impoverishment. Each language has a different way of expressing emotion. You can't express the same thing.

M: One final question--what can we expect from your shows here, this time?

AH: What can people expect? Uhhh... Joy, surprise, excitement, desire. A bit like a mix of the ferris wheel, the haunted house and the cotton candy stand at an amusement park.

Arthur H plays Club Soda nightly, Thursday to Sunday, July 26-29, 8:30pm, $34.50, with different guests each night. Monsieur H will also DJ at Shag, 300 Ste-Catherine W., on Wednesday, August 1, midnight, free

Checking the Francos without breaking the bank-o

>> Low-cost highlights at les Francofolies

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Alice!: From the ashes of Balthazar and Madame comes the peculiar activities of ?Alice!. Silly, sad, erratic and inspired, their music seems to spill forth from some crazy toybox in the attic of the collective id. They'd hardly formed when they found themselves snagging second place in the Francouvertes 2000--come see why. At Bleury and de Maisonneuve tonight, Thursday, July 26, 8pm, free.

Stefie Shock: If you can't make it to the Jean Leloup show, for which Shock is the opening act, then check Stefie out when he plays for free outside. His smooth, stylish and very accessible brand of pop for (sort of) grown-up people is a vital element of the local scene. At Bleury and de Maisonneuve on Saturday, July 28, 10pm, free.

Peuple de l'Herbe and Couch Potatoes: Lyon's "weed people," freaking and tweaking the multifaceted beats, roll up a ragga-rock-hop salad, with a side order of our local patates frites, les Couch Potatoes, who come slathered in a live-band house sauce. A wicked double bill at an unbeatable price. At le Spectrum on Saturday, July 28, 11pm, $7.50.

Les Séquelles: Montreal's own yéyé revivalists get retro-active with the sweaty sounds of the mop-topped, Beatled-booted '60s. Think Jacques Dutronc and that whole bag. In front of Complexe Desjardins on Sunday, July 29, 8 and 10pm, free.

Annie Dufresne: One-time Mirror cover girl, the fetching Dufresne is anything but coy when she hits the stage for some hyperactive pop-rock fun. She makes no bones about the debt she owes to No Doubt's Gwen Stefani, but thankfully does not sound like Betty Boop. In front of Complexe Desjardins on Tuesday, July 31, 8 and 10pm, free.

Les Jardiniers: When you care where your music's going, but don't give a damn where it comes from, you're in the same headspace as Montreal's Jardiniers, formulators of clever, carefree sci-fi pop. A proper live set is rare enough from these cats, so don't slack. At Bleury and de Maisonneuve on Saturday, August 4, 10pm, free.

Les Nuits DJ: Three cheers to the Spectra crew for the decent midnight DJ parties during the Jazz Fest, but this is somehow more appealing. Free at the door, the Francos' Nuits DJs deliver top-flight deck talent along the lines of Couch Potato Nic B., Maues, Arthur H, Stefie Shock, Niagara's Muriel Moreno and a closing night jam with les Jardiniers. At le Shag, 300 Ste-Catherine W., nightly at midnight, free.