HELENE BARBIER BANDCAMP
helenebarbier.bandcamp.com
SPOTIFY
open.spotify.com/album/7CrBMFKMBtuAXwnRfCdn2n?si=HI88XHudTxqfuq0uFi9PHA
TIDAL BORE videoclip in YouTube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsGr7UwJjRI
THE GOOD THING videoclip in YouTube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rwMIpQYS0U
The drive to learn / create that comes with understanding there's no such thing as a mistake. Picardie native Hélène Barbier has long flirted with music, skirting along its fringes yet convinced that its practice was restricted to those with access to its deepest, most arcane secrets. When she arrived in Montreal in 2012, she discovered another approach to the discipline, in a flexible and open community that celebrated accidents and fostered a free-wheeling attitude towards the things we don't master.
During summer 2014, mostly spent going to the pool and drinking sodas from Lalime in Little Italy Park, she picked up how to play bass from YouTube videos and formed Moss Lime with two girls just about as poorly versed as she was. With armfuls of compelling innocence and exuberance, the project yielded a cute, unassuming, fun and spontaneous lo-fi sound, held up by a raincoats-esque post-punk ethos, and led to two mini-albums: July First, in 2014, and Zoo du Québec, the following year - which propped up the band with an indie sheen that allowed them to perform an endless string of concerts, until they burnt themselves out.
Surrounding herself with new and dazzling friends, Hélène cooked up Phern, a project designed for having fun, and whose immediate, angular and tangled guitar-pop sounds were subjected to the limitations of writing, recording, and finishing up a track in a single afternoon, for the paradoxical purpose of creating something whose artlessness aspires to something greater. Quickly delivering the pause-clope 7-inch and cool coma full-length in 2016, the band came to a quick end the following year, despite having a second album and a bunch of shows lined up. Seeing this as a blessing in disguise, armed with a recently acquired soundcard (woo!), she spent the newly free time uploading demos to Bandcamp. And what began as a need to keep on creating morphed into a solo album project, into the desire to produce something under her own name (almost) alone, flanked by the people she liked best.
Composed in broad strokes in her room, deliberately leaving things half-finished before going into the studio, Have You Met Elliott? became a means of purging the difficult period that followed Phern's breakup: an emotional taking stock of bullying, ostracization, thinking straight, and safe places, that manages to avoid being too emo. Continuing in her usual spirit of candor, creative joy and gift of the gab, Hélène cobbles together, in an approximate English articulated around sound more than meaning, which, in the end, probably does have some kind of meaning, though that's secondary, over bass lines that avoid following the made-up guitar chords at all costs. A free-form process based on following nonsensical rules, using dissonance in a now more intentional than accidental way, and harnessing the off-kilter spirit that shot through her first tracks. In other words, undermining the cuteness of a song by replaying the sequence or riff the same way except somewhere else on the neck / planning a few songs in advance instead of banging them out on the spot. And it's all for the better.
Completed and recorded on tape at The Bottle Garden and mixed at Value Sound, Have You Met Elliott? is a merry-go-round featuring Hélène's bass, guitar, organ playing and singing, bolstered by Christian Simmons', Joe Chamandy, Emma Coldwell and Matt Robidoux's extra guitars, and Elise Paradis' violin. While before, Hélène Barbier used to apologize for her lack of virtuosity, now she's more confident about where she fits in as a musician, even though she hasn't really improved that much (or so she says). With Have You Met Elliott?, she delivers an uninhibited pop record matching the ambition of its limited means (otherwise it takes too much practice - again or so she says): a proud testament to the creative act. It couldn't be more independent and DIY. But more importantly, it's a record she can tour with.
released September 9, 2019
Songs recorded by Peter Woodford at the Bottle Garden Studio.
Mixed by René Wilson at Value Sound.
Except Tidal Bore mixed at the Bottle Garden by Peter Woodford , Christian Simmons and Hélène Barbier.
Mastered by Olivier Demeaux.
Hélène Barbier: Songs, Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Chord Organ
Christian Simmons: Drums
Joseph Chamandy: Bass on 6-8-9-10, Guitar on 3.
Emma Coldwell: Guitar on 3
Matt Robidoux: Guitar on 1-2-4-5-11
Elise Paradis: Violin on 1-7-10
Phern: Words on 3
Emotional Response cat. ER101
emotionalresponserecords.com/collections/frontpage/products/helen-barbier-debut-lp
Caballito Records cat. CR009
Michel Records : Digital CA
www.michelrecords.com/helene-barbier