In conversation in the offices of label Bravo Musique, where Jérôme 50 gave us an appointment, it will be a question of anarchism, sovereignty, love and dependence. “The consequences of consumption, we imagine that these are the effects of crack and roaming at the Berri-Uqam metro, but that’s not just that; When you drank a crate of 12 at every night for 12 years, you make an album to realize it, “admits the singer-songwriter, who launches this amazing album Confession on Friday Anarcholique.
That day, Jérôme 50 had been abstinent for 54 days already, but he had migraine. “I brushed throughout my twenty and I have headaches because of that,” reveals the young figure of the bred Quebec song, who made his debut on rue Saint-Jean, in Vieux-Québec, singing passers-by of Paul Piché and Beatles in particular.
“At 18, when I started playing music in the street, one of the first people I met was Gary, an alcoholic who played on an all-designed guitar”, a character quoted in the autobiographical song to the end of the album. “We“ Jammé ”together of the Bob Dylan and Neil Young. When he raised three or four dollars, he went to SAQ to buy a very small bottle of alcohol, like those in hotel rooms. This is how I learned to play on the street: you do a little money, to go right away. This is how I was introduced to alcoholism. »»
He played on the street for eight years before offering a first album in 2018, The hierarchillrevealing him as a kind of beck from Quebec coupled with a thinker of the Quebec language – the musician, trained in linguistics at Laval University, made his fall last fall Chilleur Dictionarya look at the oral language of young people greeted by criticism.
“Worse has arrived Tokébakicitte “Slides Jérôme. This song which poses a critical look at our society, written in the manner of Latraverse and served in Rigodon, first published in 2021, then added two years later to the album Antigueographicallyhas become a popular success. Who says success says more concerts at the agenda, says better artist’s caches, says income growth … to flambé to the SAQ.
“I was 30 years old last summer; This album is a bit of an extension of my twenty, as if I said to myself: “Wo! It’s not over!” And at the same time, it is a discussion that I have with myself in the mirror. »The album opens onto the song The King of Consumption : “Criss that life is flat when you have to be sèyes on an empty stomach / it’s also worse than eating brown bread / I find it more substance with substances / I am dependent on my dependence”, sings Jérôme on a coach air of song western to drink.
-Because on AnarcholiqueJérôme 50 does not have sad wine. Surprise! The most beautiful girl in moshpitwho follows, the musician bites in the punk ska, the brass section (of which the late saxophonist Mario Allard, tragically disappeared at the start of the year) punctuating the plated guitar agreements. Punk, characteristic of this new album, will be recognized as another relentlessness of its twenties until then never heard in its recordings.
“They say that you have to be embarrassed for having liked Sum 41, but we do not choose the era in which we grow up,” says Jérôme, showing us the punk punk music pile that he brought for the interview. “I will not hide that I was influenced by the American skate punk, Blink-182, even more NOFX”, his favorite group. Jérôme even takes up a song from the Boston Big D and the Kids Table group, Noise complaint (become in French Noise complaint): “It is rare in the translations that it works, because the accentuation bosses of English and French are very different, notes the linguist. I took a little freedom with the text, but in substance, it is the energy that emerges from it. This song is just the fun. »
At the heart of the album, the ambitious Song you are the herobeginner with a children’s choir, stretches over more than eight minutes, inviting the listener to become the “protagonist of a large anarchist epic / where revolution rhymes with execution of all the tyrants of the earth”. A work directly inspired by the 19 minutes of the satirical “punk opera” The Decline (1999), from NOFX. “This is the last song they played at their concert at the Olympic stadium. A masterpiece-when the show ended, I was crying. This is how I wanted to express myself in music, and I had not done it before because I did not have enough self -confidence, and confidence, it is built. »»
The political commitment that we recognized in Jérôme 50 always has its place on the album, between two tragicomic songs (There was a poude in poude, Darling Stop Boeere) or vulgar (Ode to church is a rosary of Quebec coronations), often both at the same time. “Well, after that, I like to talk about what I notice around me, for example on a song like The poor richa collection of character paintings ”which all consider themselves, on a reggae groove, like the rich or the poor of someone.
“The dwarf envy the homeless / the homeless desire the BS / the BS envy the musician / the musician envy the whore”, and so on. When we compare ourselves …
L’album Anarcholique, From Jérôme 50, appears on the label Bravo Musique.
