New Music
Interview
Sylvie Kreusch: “This album is a representation of the live experience”
The rising Belgian avant on the reinvention that surrounds her new LP Comic Trip
Boom chicka-waww! Like an onomatopoeic punch in the face from the 60s Batman, the title track of Comic Trip, the new album from Sylvie Kreusch, is full of these zesty, non verbal sound effects that recall comics and cartoons, playing with friends and the wide open world of childhood imagination. It’s exactly this memory and place that the Belgian artist attempts to rediscover in order to escape, if only for an album campaign, the predictability that punctuates adulthood.
And yet, it was ‘Daddy’s Selling Wine In A Burning House’ that opened the door to the album, a scintillating and sprawling track at odds with the pep of ‘Comic Trip’ that centres on an old memory unpicked during therapy.
Comic Trip isn’t just an escape with childlike abandon, then. Ahead of a sold-out show at The Lexington in London, Kreusch lets us into her world.
You’ve spoken before about using a new album cycle to reinvent yourself, which seems like a good place to start. Take us back to finishing up with 2021’s Montbray and setting to work on Comic Trip.
It’s not easy to start writing when you’re still on tour. So for me, it’s really important that the whole era of Montbray was finished, to be able to have the headspace, and also you have to get bored to write I’ve noticed. But yeah, I immediately knew that I wanted to do with my next album and that was to make something very positive, because of the first album that was a breakup album, and got pretty dark. I think for example, the the song ‘Walk Walk’ was a song that really stuck out in the album and, and that’s why it got it was a bit of an inspiration to go to the next album. It always goes a bit like that, there’s always going to be one song that, for example, now on this album, you have ‘Daddy’s Selling Wine’, and I feel like that’s also going to be an inspiration to go further with the third album.
At first I was just like trying new ideas, but it always helps for me to go to France. I always go to France, so I went to France, but this time not to Montbray, but more in the South of France, and and we actually wrote a lot of songs. I took Jasper with me, he’s my guitar player, and for this album, he was really involved from the beginning, because I thought, if it’s going to be such a positive and happy song, I think it’s going to be nice to write more together.
So yeah, the music was also much more organic in that way, because we had two heads and two more hands and less computers. We wrote a lot of songs on the piano; before that, I’ve never wrote a song on the piano. On Montbray I was always working in in Ableton, first creating a production and atmosphere, and then I started singing on it. So this was, like another approach, because, yeah, because of Jasper, also because he he was actually getting better at playing piano during that period. So that’s why he was always like, picking up the piano
It’s interesting to hear ‘Daddy Selling Wine’ was the springboard of the project because, sonically at least, it’s probably the album’s anomaly. A lot of the album is quite springy and upbeat, whereas that one is slow and echoey, and it feels like it’s just you by yourself. So I guess for all the new visual and aesthetic moodboarding, the refresh that comes after an album is more of a personal one, rather than just creative…
Indeed, yeah. I felt like I was in a really happy space at that time. Everything was going super well and of course that’s much more difficult to dig deeper. I think it’s because I had to dig deeper in myself that I immediately went into my childhood times, and of course I was inspired by the fact that I was getting older and everything I found my peace and my rest, and I really wanted that, but everything became very predictable in a way, and I was really scared of losing the naive, unpredictable part of being a child, you know? The idea that everything is possible. Once you get older, you’re more realistic about stuff and especially as an artist, it’s really difficult to start your day with, like, doing papers and and having your shit together, but yeah, also being creative. Being creative means also going with the flow and not caring about anything, opening up all your senses, and that’s kind of the theme of the the album right now. So that’s why it’s also very positive, but of course I also bumped into situations that were more dark, for example ‘Daddy’s Selling Wine’.
Music writers can often be guilty of, let’s say, pigeonholing artists that have a strong visual aesthetic: it’s lazy, easier, but also understandable. Does reinventing help to escape certain classifications?
Yeah! It’s kind of saying a f*ck you to everything that people write about me. I mean, in one way, I take it as a compliment, and there’s also a truth in it, of course. From the beginning on when I was on stage, I always read these reviews about me that I’m like “mysterious diva,” or all those things I think come to life when I’m on stage. It’s like a survival thing. But when you get to know the real me, there’s like a totally different aspect about me, and it’s like someone who’s more timid and shy and and clumsy and very open also.
I’ve always felt like that whole description was not 100% me and yeah, I felt like I really needed to show the other side of me, and also discover it for myself, because I was also a bit confused, like, who am I? Because all my best friends, or even my boyfriend who met me after he knew me as an artist, was so surprised in real life. So I think it’s important to find new aspects of yourself when you write a new album. You’re always changing as a person but also there are so many layers and and in that way, it was very inspiring to also find a new sound that really fits to the new persona in me.
It is true though that a common thread throughout your career has been – and I guess this relates to you mentioning people calling you a diva or something – a certain theatricality to your music, both live and on record. There’s been a bit of resurgence of this in indie rock recently, a certain of baroqueness theatricality; why do you think people want this now?
I haven’t thought about that actually, but it’s true, like, I see more and more artists being very over the top and theatrical – a good example is Chappell Roan.
Exactly, The Last Dinner Party too. That kind of thing. Maybe it’s goes back to what we were saying about the imagination of childhood?
Yeah, and the idea that everything is possible on stage, there are no rules. And I think in real life, we feel like we’re stuck in like, you know, politics, like we’re in this video game and we have to do whatever the government is telling us to do, and it’s becomes more and more, yeah… I think that’s a really easy escape. And also, I think people, especially my age, are very afraid of showing their feelings in real life, of committing, and for me, when I look at my personal story, I’ve always been very afraid of love and afraid of showing love, and in my lyrics or on stage I’m the opposite. I dare to say whatever I want to say and I’m loud and I’m expressive.
Talking about loud and expressive, you have quite a few fun verbal sound effects in the album, which I guess alludes to the name Comic Trip. But then you also have an EP called BADA BING! BADA BOOM!…
Allez – I love playful things! Bada Bing Bada Boom. It also reminds me of titles from the 60s and 70s, so maybe that’s the reason.
There’s also a fantastical element to Comic Trip, drifting one moment from a Gainsbourg-esque dream to a Western, but then towards the end you have ‘Home’ and some more sobering elements perhaps…
Yeah, the album starts more like a fantasy and then it becomes more closer to home, actually. I think it was important to have those two collide a bit. And also, for example, ‘Final hour’ is about the end of the world, the apocalypse, and actually for me it’s something very realistic. About wanting to having dreams for the future and wanting to have a baby and everything, but then thinking about world that’s ending.
Tell me a bit about your home as an artist in Ghent…
Well I’m from Antwerp, actually. Antwerp is more like the fashion city, so I grew up with all these people that went to the fashion academy, I went to all these parties that were expressive and dress up, you know? Then I moved to Ghent because I had a boyfriend here. It’s music that brought me to Ghent, actually. Music and love. I always felt like a nomad, always with my bag and never had my own space, my own place, my own home. It’s only since two years that I finally found my home and my boyfriend and also the city. It’s a really small city, I always thought I was going to, I don’t know, London or LA to make the big dream come true. But I think I found my peace and my inspiration in a cute little city like Ghent.
You mentioned London there – you’ve sold out The Lexington show in December and a new one has been announced for next year. What can we expect from a Sylvie Kreusch live show?
Very expressive. When you compare it with Montbray, they always said the live experience was more expressive and wild, and I think right now, the second album is more of a representation of the live experience. I sweat. A lot, haha! After two songs, always.
When I started this project, for me the most important thing was that I want to make music that you could dance to, but like with organic, warm drum sounds and percussion. I think if you see us live that is the main thing you’ll feel.
