Caustic and effect

JF Robitaille counters personal andprofessional loss by bridging earnestfolk and clever pop on Calendar

SCOWL TO A SMIRK: JF Robitaille

Don’t let the sneering lyrics fool you—JF Robitaille insists he’s a nice dude when not cutting the world’s useless beauty down on stage.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a different person, it’s just a different side of me writing those songs,” says the 35-year-old songwriter. “That’s me about 50 per cent of the time.”

Admittedly, the NDG native (and onetime singer with the Social Register) would be forgiven if he walked the streets with a permanent scowl. After tantalizing caustic-music fans with his debut EP, The Blood in My Body, in 2007, Robitaille was signed to a label, living in New York and ready to drop his first full-length. The label went belly up, taking his completed record with it, but instead of giving rise to an inconsolable grouch (although his darkly humorous lyrics do often veer that way), Robitaille returned to Montreal and began work on what would eventually be his real first album, the moody and introverted Calendar.

“The big inspiration from that situation was that it made me want to write better songs than those ones, so I wouldn’t regret what had happened.” Looking back on the defunct album though, Robitaille gets the sense it wouldn’t have made for a particularly riveting listen anyway. “I don’t play any of those songs live anymore. We recorded about 20 songs, and the best ones ended up on the EP. I must have had a sense that those songs were never going to come out.”

Written over three sessions dating back as far as 2008, Calendar covers a considerable span of the songwriter’s professional life. Having previously lived in New York and London, Robitaille was firmly planted in his hometown for this album’s creation, recording and doing pre-production in Murray Lightburn’s (of the Dears) basement, while recording the final product at Mountain City Studios with Adrian Popovich. “Calendar sounds pretty folky,” Robitaille admits. “There’s a lot of me and my guitar and little else going on. I think that’s what holds all the songs together. I wanted it to sound like something I would listen to—it’s not supposed to be played at a birthday party.”

It may just be his unadorned voice and acoustic guitar throughout most of Calendar, but as a songwriter, Robitaille isn’t going for something entirely earnest and heartfelt. On album opener “Modern Love Song Pt. 1,” he sneakily transitions from personal verses written in the first-person before switching to a more universal chorus that’s hardly cheery, but entirely relat­able. “I really love folk music, but I love the serious stuff as much as the clever. I try to have both sides filter through me and to achieve a good balance. I think it’d be pretty depressing if I just laid out my heart; I do want to add a bit of levity. But trying to be emotive about depressing subject matter can be pretty funny in itself. I sing about the flowers on every gravestone. That’s funny, especially the way I sing it—I do it a bit over the top.”

Perhaps the best example of Robitaille’s raw emotions and sardonic wit co-mingling to discomforting perfection is “Enemies,” a song about longing for the past, including your old foes. “I’ve had a lot of changes in my life, leaving people, and I have ghosts in Montreal, so the song is really about when you leave a place, I think you end up missing absolutely everything about it. At least you do when you’re a nostalgic person like me.” ■

WITH LYNN & JANE AND CLEMENTINE AT JACKIE & JUDY ON FRIDAY, NOV. 18, 8 P.M., $8

Short URL: http://www.montrealmirror.com/wp/?p=27018