If we're nominating Peak Grimes Moments from a year full of Peak Grimes Moments, a strong case can be made for the opening shot from the music video for "Kill V. Maim," the second single from Grimes' latest album, Art Angels.
In that scene, the camera slowly zooms in on Grimes at the wheel of a hot-pink, Barbie-fied version of the G.I. Joe Dreadnok Thunder Machine vehicle, all while a half-dozen rainbow goth girls dance and gyrate across the vehicle as it zooms through a technicolour animé speed-racer-scape.
Directed by Grimes and her brother, Mac Boucher, those first seconds go a long way to establish a video that references the TV show Law & Order, animé and the blood rave scene from the movie Blade – all for a song that Grimes says is about Al Pacino's role in The Godfather Pt. II, re-imagined as a gender-flipping vampire who can travel through time and space.
The song itself, with its spelled out cheer/admonishment to B-E-H-A-V-E and mind-bending subject matter, place it on the outer rim of the pop music universe. According to the synth-pop musician, trying to explain to people what "Kill V. Maim" is about remains… complicated.
While the 28 year-old, born Claire Elise Boucher, may see Art Angels as a failed experiment, the outside world doesn't. On 2015 year-end "Best Of" lists, the album was No. 1 on NME, Exclaim and Stereogum, No. 2 on Rolling Stone and No. 3 on Pitchfork, Billboard, Consequence of Sound and The New York Times. More important than Grimes' critical praise is her cultural impact. Look around any college campus, and you'll likely see a more than a few young Grimes-alikes, hair dyed in rainbow hues, dressed in convention-bending combinations of steam-punk retro-futurisms. Grimes has become both the patron saint to the Comic-Con set and a fashion icon, someone equally at home at a Star Trek convention and a Versace runway show.
And that's where Grimes' power lies. Her nerdish enthusiasms – Game Of Thrones, MMA fighter Ronda Rousey, science fiction – are all completely genuine. It makes her seem like she's just like one of us; a friend that shares our special interests.
"I try to keep staying excited about new things," she says. FKA Twigs is one of her current faves. Lana Del Rey makes her "weep uncontrollably." She "just got into The Avengers" and action movies.
Grimes' music is the loaded, layered result of these special interests. Songs like latest single, "California," approach the sweetest radio pop, but her live show – like her recent appearance at the costume ball/rave-up music festival Bestival Toronto – can occasionally descend into industrial-electro bombast, with Grimes trading her signature high vocal style for death-metal growls built atop cranking EDM beats. If this is "pop" music, it's a unique kind of pop.
"I think it depends how you define pop," says Grimes. "I think for a lot of people right now the term 'pop' conjures Top 40, and I think I'm pretty separate from that sonically, and in terms of how my music is made. Because my music is still made, functionally, in a pretty indie way.
In a world where Beyoncé's Lemonade album credits stretch more than 3,100 words long, the fact that Grimes writes, records and produces her music, on top of designing much of her album art, and directing her music videos, puts her in a rare place. Grimes says it's not so much about having total control over her empire as it is a personality trait.
It's not like Grimes isn't capable of partnerships. She says her favourite songs on Art Angels are "Venus Fly" and "Scream," two songs where she sub-contracted out the vocals to Janelle Monáe and Taiwanese rapper Aristophanes, respectively. And on the business side, she recently partnered with fun. and Bleachers member Jack Antonoff's publishing company Rough Customer for Sony ATV Music Publishing.
"Creeps," of course, remain a problem. Independent, successful female music producers are still a rare breed and in many ways Grimes is shattering a glass ceiling for music technicians. The glass isn't breaking easily, though.
"I still feel like I hear and I see a lot of 'I tried to make a song that sounds like Grimes,' and then they hired a dude [to produce]," she says, somewhat irked that people would try to imitate her sound when they could have the real thing. "Just call me. No one's ever called me for a job, really. It's one of these things where people call a dude to imitate me. I have a lot of concrete examples of this. And it bothers me because I'm, like, 'Why wouldn't you call me?' And I assume it's my gender or something.
And if that door doesn't open easily, there's a fair chance Grimes will help bust it wide. It'll be easy to tell it's her. She'll be the one driving the hot pink war machine that just smashed through the whole wall.
Jeff Moran doesn't take songwriting lightly. The Québecois singer-songwriter loves to write; he's been writing for a long time. He gives writing workshops to share his love of creation. He cultivates precious moments during which words take the power. "I protect this phenomenon called writing. I'm learning to let the words guide me, to let go, more and more," he confides. Following the release of his fourth album, Le silence des chiens (The Silence of the Dogs), Moran has noticed that his style has grown increasingly personal. For this new project, he decided to let the lyrics dictate the music, and the result is a collection of 13 very direct and intimate moments.
Moran's poetry remains voluntarily mysterious. "I love the images that someone like Léo Ferré would create when he would wax lyrical," he says. "I love when things remain a little vague, so that you can interpret them differently." He says he's not worried about what the audience understands, because he believes that part of the work belongs to them – not unlike the experience of looking at an impressionist painting.
He catches these moments on the fly, when inspiration rears its head in the whirlwind called life. Now a father of four, the eldest just graduated from high school and the youngest born just a few days before this interview, Moran keeps his antennae out pretty much all the time. Armed with his guitar, a pencil and some paper, he's inspired by his charmed and eventful life, surrounded by kids and friends – and by his partner Catherine Major, also a singer-songwriter whose career has kept her busy for the better part of the last 20 years.
Moran's praise for the virtuosity of his collaborator of the past eight years is boundless. "Thomas Carbou works so hard! His idea bank is endless, he's an impressive musical reference," says Moran. "He knows me so well that he knows how to respect who I am while remaining open and constructive, bringing ideas and sounds to the table in a perfectly natural way." The two musicians recorded the album on their own, very simply, in September of 2015. Every morning, after they both dropped off their respective kids at daycare or school, they would work on a song, recording and mixing it in the afternoon.
Moran is a humble man that thrives when he creates. He feels a sense of wonderment at his own songs, just as a child would. After four albums and a collection of texts (Dans ma tête), he felt it was time to do something different. The song "L'orgueil," one of his most personal to date, could mark a change in the way he expresses himself. It's totally different musical direction, still with Thomas Carbou, that could take him to a more electronic, visceral sound… who knows? For the time being, Moran is content to keep loving life, and being inspired by it.
We meet with Jonathan Painchaud in early June – three hours before he's to take the stage during the Francofolies – and just then, he decides to include a few songs from his latest album, La tête haute (Head Held High), his fifth solo album and eighth overall, released on April 15, 2016, after a three-year hiatus. New band, new label, new record, new life; Painchaud serenely shoulders his 41 years.
Featured in a close-up on the album's cover is Painchaud's dog Peyo, who inspired one of the songs, "Le quadrupède pétomane" ("The Quadruped Fartist"). "It's a nod to chanson Française, such as Renaud or Brassens, except I sing about my dog's flatulence! On another of those ten songs, 'Plus que la vie elle-même' ('More Than Life Itself'), there's this super-intimate moment with my daughter, where I let myself be carried by the wind, and talk candidly about my personal life." The song "Ma belle infirmière" is the perfect example of that. It's currently in rotation on the radio.