“What I wanted, above all, was to see if I was still able to write songs. It is in these words that Philippe B retraces the genesis of the New Administration album. At Tabac Villeray, where we meet him on a hot May morning, the singer-songwriter is frank: there was no question, for this disc, of attempting prowess. He just needed to see if the ability to compose songs, the same as before, still existed in him.
To understand how the brilliant singer-songwriter, after five albums, found himself doubting he could write, we have to go back. Six years have passed since this fifth album, La grande nuit vidéo, released in 2017. In the meantime, many things have happened in the life of Philippe B. A child, a move and, of course, the pandemic. For him, this global crisis has notably extended a break that he had already taken.
“Initially, it was a voluntary termination of paternity, from the pregnancy. We had created a bubble… which was immediately followed by the health bubble [due to COVID-19]. We’ve been home for a year. In this context where “we were ready to start going out again, but we couldn’t”, the singer-songwriter therefore stayed in his bubble and instead got back to creating.
In his new rhythm, the artist composed songs while telling himself that better circumstances would come soon, allowing him to better tackle the task.
But looking back, Philip B doesn’t feel like he did any better once his daughter was in daycare and his time was a bit more free. “With a bit more normal rhythm, I worked faster, I managed to do more songs, to finish the business that I had started,” he says. But in the end, the ideas, the real flashes, the key elements, that’s what I had done in conditions that were far from ideal. When I had to find gaps to work on, the songs were more intuitive and even if I didn’t always have time to resume the next day what I had started, if I found a little time to persevere, it was because that it was worth it. »
Thus, the initial material is “as good, if not better” than what he did next, but above all reminds him of what he was able to create in these unprecedented circumstances. “I had recordings on my phone, a few words or piano and a lot of times you hear it screaming back and it stops,” he recalls smiling.
Obviously, the changes in his life inspired the words of Philippe B. “Because I do autofiction, I was going to draw from there, but I had some apprehension to find the right way to do it, he explains. -he. I told myself that it would be difficult to avoid this theme [of paternity], but at the same time, it had to not be too flowery, that it be interesting for those who do not have children. That’s always the challenge of writing songs: finding angles, particular perspectives, poetic mechanics to talk about them in an interesting way. »
Upon finishing his songs, he moved with his family outside of Montreal, where he had lived for the previous 30 years of his life (and where he eventually returned to live after 2 years). The final product of his months of creation, tinged with all these upheavals, most of them positive, is called New Administration. A title that refers to those restaurants that change ownership, but remain the same, from the menu to the decoration. “Everything’s changed, everything’s the same,” he sings on the title track.
“From [the title song], I realized that there was a theme, a concept, he explains. Even if I write a guitar song with the kind of poetry I used to do, it may sound the same, but basically it’s completely different. It’s like someone writes plays with two characters all their life and eventually starts writing plays with three characters. There is a fundamental axis which is different, a basic change. When I talked about my life, I often talked to my girlfriend. »
No pressure to “reinvent” himself for Philippe B. He was able to write a new album, of which he is proud, and that’s already very good. He turned to his “classics”, going all out on the song, while putting in high caliber arrangements. He plays most of the instruments there, he did the sampling (one of his favorite processes), he recorded and mixed it.
Now that he knows he can still create, Philippe B is just waiting to “pick up where [he] left off.” “I don’t have the idea of conquering new territories. I want to resume the relationship with the public where we left off. I like the place where I was, the kind of rooms where I played. Although, of course, I hope that [the album] will reach as many people as possible. »
