Charlotte Cardin’s second album is a moment in time, made up of 99 nights, frozen in music where the Montrealer allowed herself to explore everything spontaneously to free herself. She will present the results of her efforts on Friday.
When Charlotte Cardin’s acclaimed debut record, Phoenix, was released in the midst of a pandemic, it was still not possible for her to go defend it on the road. In the summer of 2020, the artist then immediately set about making the sequel. The result is 99 Nights, a time capsule that will officially take off in less than 24 hours.
And because there was no obligation, no constraints of time or form, the creation was “liberating”. For 99 Nights, a metaphorical number that embodies the period when her inner turmoil gave rise to her new songs, she wrote, composed and sang, and she broke free.
“For Phoenix, it was a therapy that was still difficult: I had to go back to moments that hurt,” she says, a few days before the release of 99 Nights.
We chat with the singer in a meeting cubicle in the offices of her record label, Cult Nation, in Mile End. That day, she embarked on a blitz of interviews to promote this second album, of which she was visibly very proud, and which she spoke about with contagious enthusiasm.
In the summer of 2020, therefore, Charlotte and her bassist, Mathieu Sénéchal, found themselves in the latter’s apartment to “jam” until the arrival of pieces of songs, a way of making music that she had rarely adopted before.
“We would come in the morning and just make music. I had lots of ups and downs, I felt at a crossroads in many aspects of my life, says Charlotte Cardin. That’s what I needed. To just make music to get away from it all. Sometimes I wrote to get out of what I was going through. It was something super spontaneous, it was a super playful process for me in so many different ways, in the sounds, in the instruments, in the words. I could let myself go in the studio, I had fun. »
“I had a little more confidence approaching the creation of this album, she says then. It allowed me to write songs and play with sounds that were like a release. It’s as if my playground had expanded. I was not afraid to go touch new elements or talk about certain things. »
The record is very introspective, the singer questions herself, observes herself, gives herself permission to have fun also in all these reflections. “We wanted to keep an approach that made it feel like a diary. There are some really very personal stories of mine, but there are also things that happened to my friends. »
Speaking of friends, some of his closest companions were there from the beginning to the end of the creation of 99 Nights.
The core formed by his great artistic accomplice and impresario Jason Brando, Lubalin and Mathieu Sénéchal. But the list of collaborators does not stop there. Both in writing, where we can see in the credits the names of Aliocha, Skiifall (who raps on the bilingual piece Enfer) and Patrick Watson, and in terms of production, where the names of Mr. Hudson, Sam Avant, MAG and Rob Grimaldi, among others.
From the first time we met Charlotte, a few years ago, it was obvious when talking to her about her art that those around her are her strength. Her talent alone allows her to accomplish great things, but her collaborators are a fuel she could not do without.
“There was a great collective aspect in the creation of this album”, she notes today.
After those 99 nights, we had to go on the road to present the debut album, Phoenix. When the schedule permitted, she traveled to London or Toronto to work on 99 Nights songs.
With the main lines of the new record well drawn and a clear direction, she went to meet foreign directors whose approaches and styles are different, but who all had in common the ability to take her work where she imagined it. “But it was spontaneous,” she says. We had our direction, but when we arrived, for example, with a producer who told us that his background was the jazz saxophone, we went to play with that. We let ourselves be carried away by the atmospheres of the different producers. »
The result is eclectic without being scattered. The songs have themes in common (ego, introversion, renewal or love, of course), but also the fact that they make people dance softly, for the most part. True to form, Charlotte Cardin did not miss the opportunity to deliver a striking ballad. The last track on the album, Next to You, was written with Montrealer Patrick Watson, with whom she has been working for a year already, since a duet at the Festival d’été de Québec.
“He is an extraordinary collaborator, who is so inspiring, says Charlotte Cardin. When I first arrived in the studio, he asked me to play my latest vocal recordings in my cell. And the most recent was this piano melody that I had worked on that morning, that I had had in mind for months without finding where to bring it. I made him play it and we knew we would work from that. »
Next to You is the song she has “spent the longest time on”, approximately six months. Charlotte has moved to Paris and the piece is about her city, Montreal, which she wanted to leave to “better [s’]blossom”. “It was a really tough decision. Montreal will always be my city and I come back to it all the time. But a lot of things were waiting for me and I needed to do it to grow. This song is the perfect last chapter of this little diary. »
The artist is now preparing to sing this diary on stage, all over the world, starting with Quebec. On 99 Nights, she gave her voice new nuances, subtleties that allow her to do a lot without always pushing the highest notes. These new vocal challenges will also translate into a show. Charlotte feels ready to hit the road, to bring this record to life differently, two years after these 99 nights when it began to exist. A new chapter begins.
