Going electric

Peter Peter joins franco folk poetry with anglo indie pop

Peter Peter’s “Homa” was named the best French song of 2011 by iTunes Canada. It’s the lead track on the Québécois singer-songwriter’s self-titled album, released last March. The song bears plaintive melodies, hushed tones, acoustic strums, electric peals and an accelerated heartbeat that instills a sense of urgency (a reflection, perhaps, on its titular reference to Hochelaga-Maisonneuve), and establishes Peter Peter as more than a rote folkie. Many Montrealers picked up on this last summer and fall, when he played a series of festivals, and with more and more local, stateside and ROC gigs in the making, word is spreading to the anglo sphere.

Born in Chicoutimi, Peter joined his first band in his late teens, during the decade when he lived in Quebec City. He was into grunge and American indie rock while his bandmates favoured metal.

“We were mixing our influences, and getting drunk before performing shows,” he recalls. “It wasn’t good at all, but it’s where I learned how to scream and to go crazy on stage, and I liked it, we had fun. I missed that when I started to play alone with my guitar.”

The other striking difference between his band and his current work is the language. Peter only began to write in French when he moved to Montreal in the mid-aughts, partly because he felt his English wasn’t good enough for rock, and because (with the exception of a handful of acts like Cœur de Pirate, who cameos on his record, and Malajube) he’s not a fan of French music. “French rock bands are corny, it’s always 10 years behind, and even French folk music—I’m always trying to escape cliché,” he explains. But it wasn’t easy.

“The first two years of my French songs sucked, but I went on a trip to France and when I got back, I restarted my life. I just decided to cancel everything: every single song I had at the time, my friends, the band. And then it worked.”

After moving to Montreal, Peter won a songwriting prize that awarded him a gig at Place des Arts, and a record deal with Audiogram wasn’t far behind. He recorded at Hotel2Tango with Howard Bilerman, who helped to alleviate some of Peter’s musiquefrancophobia by encouraging him to play electric guitar.

“He said you have your own tone, you should trust yourself, and I did on a couple of songs,” says Peter, who continued to electrify his sound when he built up his band. “In our live performances, we play rock, and on the second album—well, you’ll see.” ★

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