LES FRONTIÈRES DU PRÉSENT "The Present’s borders"

Modern world is obsessed with borders, boundaries.. today’s architecture and how our cities are organized are just another way capitalism found to alienate us and create an exacerbated feeling of fear. We live like survivors in a post apocalyptic world filled with barricaded wrecked buildings and dangerous neighbors...

LA CHUTE "The Fall"

"La Chute" (The Fall) is a philosophical novel by Albert Camus. Camus broaches the theme of the "modern man" and blames the whole human kind. He deplores the lack of sense in our life, the boredom inherent in these modern times. Useless jobs, immured families and comfortable leisures make us apathetic.

QUI PERD PERD "Losers Gonna Lose"

This is just a frontal song about how injustices seem inalterable sometimes. How "winners" always win and us losers seem condemned to lose forever..

APOCALYPSE 6:12 "Apocalypse of John 6:12"

This is when the Sixth Seal is opened, it’s the last one before the end of the world. While the ecological emergency is more dramatic than ever, the ruling capitalist class is telling us what we can call "stories" or "fictions" about progress, about unlimited growth... individual actions won’t be enough to reverse the trend. We need a new collective narrative, we need a change of paradigm.

LA BATAILLE DE PARIS "The Battle of Paris"

2018 and 2019 have been very strong in terms of police repression and violence in France, and especially during the "Gilets Jaunes" protests in Paris. Many demonstrators lost eyes, hands or got pulmonary damages and at least 15 died in 2019. This song draws a parallel between this and the tragic massacre against the Paris Commune in 1871. La Commune was a radical socialist and revolutionary autonomous government that ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28 1871. The National Guard took over Paris and ended the Paris Commune during what we called "La Semaine sanglante" (bloody week). 20.000 were killed !!

ENTRE BOOBA ET BALKANY "Between Booba and Balkany"

This song draws a parallel between Booba, a famous rapper and Balkany who is a corrupted politician. They both are tragic symbols of the area where I live. Booba’s message, like many other mainstream artists, is all about making money, being rich, driving fancy cars wrapped in oppressive, misogynistic, homophobic language, which is similar to that from right wing ultra-liberal, corrupted, embezzling, tax-fraudulent politicians.

LE CASSE DU SIÈCLE "The Heist of the Century"

The gap between the ruling class and the stockholder is getting smaller everyday. In France and everywhere else those partners in crime are emptying our welfare funds and breaking our public services up. Economy is trying to justify this but it’s all about profit for a chosen few. We should be working for us.

L’AIGLE ET LA FOUDRE "The Eagle and the Thunderbolt"

Those are the symbols of Jupiter, god of the gods. We like to mock French president Macron by calling him "Jupiter". It’s a song about how capitalism, and Macron in particular, exist, rule and speak without any empathy for the working class.

PASSER L'ARME A DROITE "Pass the weapon to the right"

This is a song I wrote and sing with our friend Noé Talbot, a songwriter from Quebec with whom we toured a lot those past few years. The french expression "to pass the weapon to the left" means "dying", we returned that expression "to the right" to talk about the way some of our friends lost some of their convictions growing up, and how modern life, Uber/Netflix comfort turns them into the old reactionary idiots we always hated. I’m afraid to take that path without knowing it sometimes, I hope we’ll keep our integrity.

VAMPIRE "Vampire"

This song is about masculinity, and how the mainstream cliché of virility and manhood makes me uncomfortable with my male body. It takes time and a lot of distance to re-evaluate and deconstruct that dominant speech. Masculinity is not a natural distinction, and we need to reinvent those concepts..

LA GUERRE DES PAUVRES "The War of the Poor"

Liberalism managed somehow to make the class opposition disappear, by dividing the workers, and making the identification of rulers as enemies more subtle than it used to be. Their weapons being the isolation of the division of labor, delocalization, and uberization of the workers of course, but also creating this illusion of comfort through consumerism for the popular classes... But class war is still relevant to me, and it seems like more and more people realize this and that the tendency might reverse, and that we could win that fight someday... I guess it’s one of the only "optimistic" songs I ever wrote.

L’ARGILE "Clay"

This song is about seeing relatives getting old and sick and depressed and how it’s hard to find a way to deal with it, how it resonate with the first few symptoms of elderliness I can experience myself, and how it’s not really to die that is frightening but the whole part when the body and the mind seem to escape the control we once had. The terrible feeling of being trapped in our own body.

MARE NOSTRUM "Mare Nostrum"

Mare Nostrum is the nickname of the Mediterranean Sea, it’s latin for "our sea". This also the name of an intergovernmental operation in Europe to respond to the "migration crisis" in the past few years. It ceased operations in 2014. This is a song about Europe’s disgraceful way of dealing with refugees, and how nothing seems to get better...

JE NE POSSEDE QUE MON CORPS "I have only my body"

Like a few others on this album, this song is inspired by a passage from LA NAUSEE, (“Nausea" in english) which is a philosophical novel by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, published in 1938. “The past is a landlord’s luxury. Where’s shall I keep mine? You don't put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house. I have only my body: a man entirely alone, with his lonely body, cannot indulge in memories; they pass through him. I shouldn't complain: all I wanted was to be free.”

CEUX QUI NE SONT RIEN "Those who are nothing"

Soon after Macron’s inauguration as French president, he gave a speech in a former train station which has been converted into a startup incubator. He said “In a train station, you cross paths with people who succeed and people who are nothing.” I guess we are the ones who are nothing, then. The end of the song is also a tribute to french railway workers and labor unions. The last sing along says, "Don’t forget that in our train stations, we sing our labor unions!”

IDENTITE RIGIDE "rigid identity"

Gender stereotypes have always been pressuring me since I was a kid, but it feels like these days in France, conservative minds tend to be more vindictive about it. Spitting their reactionary thoughts without inhibition anymore. This song is for all of us that float between gender stereotypes and roles: The boys and men that are being mocked because they are "too sensitive", because they raise their kids or wear makeup. For the girls and women who speak their mind too much or too loud. Those who don’t dream about a perfect household. Those who don’t want to be a damsel in distress. We need to reclaim whoever we are and however we feel.

L'AMOUR EST UN CHIEN DE L'ENFER "Love is a dog from hell"

The title of this song is a reference to a Bukowski’s volume of poetry mostly about love. It’s a song about the ending of a relationship, driven by indifference, resentment and a lot of alcohol consumption. The chorus says "I’ll stop drinking when the momentum will come from my own blood. I’ll stop believing that we are decent.”

L'AVENTURE DE L'ORDINAIRE "The adventure of the ordinary"

In "la nausée" by Sartre, the main character, Roquentin comes back from a long and exotic journey. He becomes anxious and sad, confronted with the return to ordinary life and with his incapacity to tell his stories. This song is about accepting the fact that there’s no magic in our lives and embracing boredom. "there is no adventure"

UNE BOUTEILLE A LA MER "A bottle to the sea"

On one of our US tours we drove through Gary, Indiana. One of those rust belt cities that have been devastated by economic crisis. It inspired this song. Most french kids have a distorted vision of the US: An american dream ideal and opulent image spread by pop culture and hollywood movies. Even for me, as a leftist, educated adult, my first visits to the US have been eye-opening. The misery in those neighborhoods, the empty houses, the closed stores, the $4 food stamps per day for a family, the harsh reality of the healthcare system, the elderly working till their last breath, the stray dogs, the religious bigotry, the gun culture…

EN MARCHE !

"en marche" is the name of French president Marcon’s new movement. It translates to both ”walking" and "working". Implying that we must walk toward our radiant future through work and accumulation of wealth. Macron’s neo-liberal vision of progress includes less rights for the workers, downsizing public services, cutting corporate taxes and so forth…

GOLGOTHA

Sometimes I feel like I’m in a Scorsese movie. Between the narrow minded pressure of still strong Judeo-Christian culture around me and the brutal neo-liberalism that seems more and more unbeatable.

LES FILS ET LES FILLES DES SORCIERES QUE VOUS N'AVEZ PAS BRULEES "The sons and daughters of the witches you didn't burn"

This is a tribute to the feminists who fought for women’s rights. There is a reference to the "Manifesto of the 343 Sluts", a statement signed in 1971 by 343 notable women admitting publicly that they had an abortion when it was still illegal in France, exposing themselves to criminal penalty of course. It was followed by a manifesto signed by doctors claiming "We want freedom of abortion. It is entirely the woman's decision. We reject any entity that forces her to defend herself, perpetuates an atmosphere of guilt, and allows underground abortions to persist" This led to the abolition of criminal prosecution for voluntarily terminating a pregnancy.

PEINE DE VIE "Life sentence"

This is an umpteenth song about feeling down. About how it’s hard to get better when everything around us: pop culture, advertising, shallow human connection, all seem to promote extreme consumerism, a reactionary way of life and the cult of happiness.

PLUS JE CONNAIS LES HOMMES TE PLUS J'AIME LES CHIENS "The more I know humans, the more I like dogs"

This world is fucked up. Please bury me the deepest you can, so the archeologists of the future won’t think that I was hanging out with you all.

LE POUR ET LE CONTRE "The pors and cons"

A friend of ours (Jeremy Guichard) wrote these lyrics. For me it’s a song about growing old, feeling our bodies and capacities fade away. My favorite line from this song is,"Yesterday Darwin put out a contract on me"

NOUS SOMMES MORT TROP JEUNES "We died too young"

"We live in a spectacular society, that is, our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation of spectacles. Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken out of the real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for experience." Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle.