Caving in

Malajube’s third album pokes around prehistory and plays the pop card hard

When life gets a hard-working man down, sometimes there’s nothing left for him to do but retreat to his man-cave, regroup and return when he’s ready to prove his manliness once again. After crashing through the glass ceiling of francophone rock bands with the English-market-penetrating Trompe l’Oeil, a world-tour-weary Malajube shied from their growing profile with the loose, jam-heavy Labyrinthes, which, true to its name, was a complicated puzzle many fans at home and abroad had trouble navigating.

But the Montreal foursome are a slippery, keenly self-aware bunch. No doubt relishing their underdog status after Labyrinthes‘ mixed reception, they sequestered themselves in a dome-shaped house in Morin Heights and recorded the quirky pop mammoth La Caverne. It’s an album so upbeat, positive and melodically rich it will leave many celebrating the return to form and wondering why they didn’t make it sooner.

“It wasn’t that Labyrinthes was too sombre,” says frontman Julien Mineau. “It was just more scattered. It was what we needed to do at the time, though, slow down the machine for a little bit, con­centrate more on jamming and to not put so much pressure pre-planning everything.

“It’s true, Labyrinthes didn’t make as big an impression at the international level, but it gave us more time to think about the kind of album we wanted to make. We wanted to go back to more structured writing, lighter stuff. I think it’s what people might have wanted too.”

But Malajube are too clever to passively placate consumer demand. La Caverne, in all its syrupy, “bon cheese” (as Mineau puts it) glory, is their most complex work yet, the product of their improved musicianship as they enter their thirties (last week Mineau hit the big three-oh). “I think La Caverne is better, more intelligent, even though it might come across as almost comedic at first. A lot of work went into the melodies this time, to make them more positive, or more rock, or more pop, or more danceable.”

In shacking up in their geodesic hideaway in the middle of the woods, accessible only by driving up a steep slope for two kilometres, Malajube got a chance to reflect on their time as Quebec’s great indie rock export, when they accepted every offer to perform from every corner of the globe. Mineau’s thoughts on the subject seem rather mixed.

“You realize there are so many bands out there, and tastes change so quickly. Every time you come back to a city you’ve been to, you’re starting from square one again. We did it, we gave our all, and it didn’t really result in anything, and it leaves you thinking it’s probably better to just concentrate on Quebec, Canada, the U.S. and France.

“But it didn’t just break our dreams. It created them too.”

Returning to the calm woods after their globetrotting experience essentially gave the band the prehistoric vs. modern theme that recurs throughout La Caverne. “We’re in the process of watch­ing the music industry die, so we figured, why not revert back to prehistoric times? I liked the juxtaposition, singing about a band being on the road and comparing that to the uncomplicated life of the nomad hunter. We were recording in something that looked like a cave, so it felt like the perfect place to make the contrast.” ■

ALBUM LAUNCH AT LA TULIPE ON TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19–20, BOTH SHOWS SOLD OUT

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