In town for the Canadian Music Week on Thursday, the Montreal-based Pas Chic Chic play music that’s truly devoid of genre pigeonholing, a bizarre and yet strangely accessible array of sounds that draw from French ye-ye, 60s free jazz, film scores and hints of punk rock. Their 2008 album Au contraire was hailed by many independent music rags as one of the finest releases of the year, with the Francophone band gaining a surprisingly devoted fan-base in the Anglophone community.

Playing at the El Mocambo, lead singer (and former Godspeed You! Black Emperor member) Roger Tellier-Craig, vocalist/keyboardist Marie-Douce, bassist Eric Gingras and more recent member Gavin John Sheehan are the creators of this lovely music (along with drummer Eric Fillion, who was doing a sound check and thus couldn’t participate in the interview). They also put more thought into the singing animal question than Hamlet did into murdering his uncle (that portion had to be edited for length).

Okay, first of all: How are you enjoying leaving cold, bleak Montreal for cold, bleak Toronto so far?

Roger: [laughs] Actually, it’s not so bad. The whole scene this week is really hectic, but it’s a nice change.
Eric: It seems nice enough.

Anything in particular you like about playing in Toronto?

Roger: Well actually, we haven’t really had too many good memories here, because all the previous times we’ve played here have been kind of shitty performances! [laughs]
Gavin: So it’s mostly our fault!
Marie: It’s just that our music is sometimes out of context. We’ve mostly played to a really rock-centred audience, so the reception hasn’t been very open, you know?
Roger: We played a gallery show last time we were here, and we sounded like shit.

You’re too hard on yourselves! Maybe it’s the venue’s fault?

Marie-Douce: It might help! I mean, it might have something to do with the equipment, too. We brought our own equipment to the show tonight, but we found out that we weren’t supposed to because the equipment here was supposedly “better.”
Eric: “Better.” [laughs]

Well then, it’s not your fault as musicians, right?

Gavin: We’ll say that.
Roger: Well, we’ll see. Are you coming to the show tonight?

Of course!

Roger: Well then, you’ll see us fail. [laughs] Or maybe succeed?

Ha! I’m sure you’ll do great. By the way, are you guys going to go see some of the other bands playing this weekend?

Marie-Douce: We’re not sure yet. I mean, we’ve played shows with We Are Wolves before, but we aren’t really familiar with a lot of the groups!
Roger: Yeah, we don’t actually know many of them! I mean, I couldn’t tell you who the main groups were.
Gavin: Who’s playing?

Well, I guess the biggest band playing is Bloc Party, but there’s some others like Sloan and some other really awful stuff like Buckcherry.

Roger: [to Eric] Ah, they took Chuck Berry’s name and switched it around!

They denigrate Chuck Berry with that.

Eric: [laughs] I’ve never heard them.

You’re not missing much, trust me! Anyway, on to the actual music: what should we expect from your show tonight? Are you doing any improvising, any new stuff?

Roger: It depends how drunk we are! [laughs]
Marie-Douce: Well, actually, we’ve started to improvise in our sets more and more. We kind of move out of what the songs on the album sound like, it’s a little more instrumental.
Eric: It’s not completely different from how it sounds on the album, but it’s different enough that you’d know.

Is this what could be expected in your next release?

Roger: Well, that’s the idea. It’s going to be a little more experimental, more of our influences feeding off each other, that sort of stuff. Our future songs will start to sound more like what you might hear tonight, for sure. We’re going to try to get something out soon, hopefully start recording in the spring and summer. We have all the compositions ready, but the only thing is that we don’t really have the funds to make it yet! [laughs]

An EP, perhaps?

Gavin: That’s the idea, yeah. The album seems really old to us, so we’d like to get something out soon to let people know that we’re still around.
Marie-Douce: There’s really no fixed plan for what we’re going to do yet, but like he [Roger] said, the compositions are fine, but it’s just that we need the money to record it more completely.
Eric: I think it’s important for us to not be grouped into a specific genre, so if we put out something that’s a little more experimental, it might open people up to whatever our new compositions sound like, even if it might be a bit “weird.” [laughs]

What are these influences that you guys “feed off” from each other? It seems there’s a lot of Serge Gainsbourg in there, right?

Roger: Yeah, Gainsbourg is big with us. It’s pretty safe to say that we’re all really into Gainsbourg. But yeah, we all kind of bring our own things with us when we play, since we all have different tastes, right? Like, I appreciate [James Bond film composer] John Barry a lot, so that might combine with some other tastes like krautrock and psychedelic music that the the others have.
Eric: Yeah, we’re going to try to include a lot of this stuff in what we do next, kind of making a collage-type sound.

This sounds ambitious. If you guys keep talking like this, everyone’s gonna think you’re about to make the next Sgt. Pepper’s or something!

Roger: [laughs] We’ll try!
Marie-Douce: We’re ambitious people!

It seems so! Changing the subject slightly: you get a lot of reviews in the press that say stuff like, “Wow, it’s amazing that a band that sings in French can be so popular with English-speaking people!” When you hear people say that, do you ever want to tell them to go to Hell?

Roger: [laughs] No, not at all! I mean, we’ve been getting reviews that say that, but I actually still think we’re more popular with French-speaking people.
Gavin: I think the fact that our stuff is sung in French does have a lot to do with how people perceive us. That’s why we’re starting to experiment more, so we don’t make it might appeal more.
Marie-Douce: And if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t really matter to us because we’ll keep trying to kind of make our stuff more complete.
Eric: The influences converge.

Okay, a final question for all of you, as per tradition: If you were a singing animal, what singing animal would you be?

Roger: [laughs] I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about it! I can’t answer.

You have no choice!

Roger: Um, okay… I guess I’ll be a shark.
Eric: A singing shark! [laughs]
Marie-Douce: I guess I’d be a turtle.
Gavin: I don’t know what I’d be. What should I be?
Roger: I don’t know, what does he seem like?

You guys are thinking too hard into this!

Gavin: Okay, I’d be a sloth.

A sloth? Really?

Roger: [laughs] What’s a sloth?

It’s one of those really slow, lazy animals that hangs from trees. They live in South America, I think.

Roger: Oh, yeah! [laughs] A sloth, really?

Eric? What would you be?

Eric: I don’t know, I’m not sure… I don’t think I can answer.

You have to!

Eric: Okay, I’d be an aye-aye.

What’s an aye-aye? Did you just make that up?

Roger: [laughs] No, he didn’t! I know what he’s talking about, but I don’t know what the English word is for it.
Eric: It’s kind of like a possum, it has really big eyes?

A lemur? Is it a lemur?

Eric: No, it’s not a lemur… look it up, but I promise it’s real! [laughs]

***

When Pas Chic Chic took the stage at El Mocambo that night, they weren’t lying about their increasingly prevalent experimental tendencies. The songs were not very discernible from the material heard on their studio releases, and yet the set was no less engaging. With three keyboards set up, the band pounded on their instruments in bizarre rave-ups that kept the audience transfixed.

All of the songs played seemed to blur together, to create more of a visceral experience thatn simply a set of songs. And for a band that’s identified as distinctly ‘Francophone’ in nature, there wasn’t very much singing at all – I’d guess that only about 30% of the set involved vocals at all.

All in all, the show was very successful and was quite appreciated by the audience. Their final vamp, played on three keyboards with a repeating drum rhythm, echoed the shoegazer bands of the early nineties in its minimalist approach. And yet the group played with complete conviction; even in the most far-out and abstract moments, they always seemed to know exactly what they were doing – not a hint of randomness.

(Incidentally, the aye-aye that Eric referred to really does exist, and it’s gotta be one of the most disturbing, nightmarish creatures in the world; it’s apparently even killed frequently in Madagascar because it’s said to be a spectre of evil. Look it up if you really hate sleep.)

Official Website: http://paschicchic.com/
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/paschicchic

No photos were taken from this event.