With albums such as 2018’s Working Class Woman and last year’s City of Clowns, as well as infectious singles including Work It and Y.A.A.M., Marie Davidson has carved out a niche as one of the more distinctive artists in electronica.
Blending a variety of musical styles and a heavy dollop of satire – the track Push Me Fuckhead features a takedown of CAPTCHA veritication prompts – City Of Clowns is arguably the French Canadian artist’s most accomplished long player to date, focusing on big tech, surveillance capitalism, social media, power, politics and human autonomy.
Having had a packed summer of festival appearances, Davidson is currently touring smaller venues – including an appearance at Dublin’s Whelan’s on 1 September (tickets available here). She’s also about to release her first book of poetry, Traveller’s Faith, which is due to land this week. 909originals caught up with her.
Marie, great to chat to you. Are you in Montreal at the moment, or are you in Europe?
I just arrived back in Montreal and I will leave again soon. It’s been a busy August, and also will be in early September. But then things are gonna cool down. I’m gonna take a break in September because I’ve been going off too, too much.
I have to do it for me, but also on a professional level, the way I’ve been travelling and the gigs I’ve been doing are so big. I need to take care of myself to make sure I can properly honour the things I want to do.
I was at your gig at Beyond The Pale in June, and there are so many other festivals you’ve done this year. With your shows, it’s like an hour of power and intensity.
To be honest, yes. My live shows have always been intense and energetic.
But this year, I’m going a bit beyond what I used to do, I guess, because I know the show so well. The level of energy is really intense. And it’s really fun.
But that makes it a big, big high. And, you know, what goes up must come down. And the days after, if I don’t travel, if I don’t do another gig, it goes down. So I understand that to make sure not to burn out and kill this magic, I need to take some time off to nurture my artistic practice, not just in my personal life.
I wanted to start with one of the standout tracks for me on City of Clowns, because I’m a bit of a techno head myself – Contrarian, which is the full-on rave, trance, techno track.
Have you noticed how the live version is different? I don’t know if you heard it at Beyond The Pale.
What do you do differently?
It’s the progression. It’s like the same song, the same beats, the same notes, but the progression is very different. And there’s additional sequences. It could almost be like a remix. It’s an alternate version.
Contrarian sums up, in a way, what you do musically, because you’ve got so many different styles going on. You’ve got New Beat on Demolition. You’ve got synth-pop on Fun Times. Electro on Statistical Modelling. I guess my question is, do you relish being a contrarian? Is that kind of part of your modus operandi?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I’m putting out my first book of poetry this week – Traveller’s Faith. It’s like an extension of the City of Clowns cycle. It’s a book of all the pictures from the shoots related to City of Clowns and my poems.
So that’s also contrarian for someone who has a DJ/live techno career. So, yes, I am a contrarian. I don’t do it to contradict people or upset people. It’s just I can’t stick to one thing, even if I try.
That’s kind of refreshing, because a lot of artists, certainly when they hit a level of success like you have, they get pigeonholed. That freedom and being able to maintain that freedom keeps things interesting, right?
Absolutely. For me, the pigeonholing thing is something I could never let happen to me. I find it so sad, and I’d rather take risks.
I know that not all of the projects I will do will have the same amount of success, but it’s OK. I see my career as a body of work with many different music projects and poetry and sometimes photo shoots, films, music videos. They’re all a larger body of work of the Marie Davidson experience.
The Marie Davidson experience, that sounds like a jazz band.
But the main thing will always be music. But even within the music, it can vary in terms of style or mood, genres.
With City of Clowns, I presume it doesn’t refer to a specific place. It’s kind of more of a broader observation or an idea state.
It’s about the world we live in.
There’s a contradiction at the heart of the album, which I picked up – this theme of technology taking away humanity. But then you’re using machines to communicate that idea. That’s obviously intentional, right?
Yes, absolutely. But also, let’s be honest, the machines I use are not that high-tech anymore. The technology I’m criticising or questioning is big tech. It’s not the same as the machines I use to program music, like hardware or Ableton
I’m not against technology. I hope people don’t think that, because I use technology every day. I have a smartphone, I travel. I’m on social media. But I really question the importance and the amount of time it has taken in our lives, and how dependent we have become on technology, especially right now – AI and big tech.
You kind of do it in a playful way as well. You have this almost artistic alter ego of a clown.
I mean, you have to do these things – criticise or question the status quo, and try to get people to reflect on things. You have to do it playfully because the world is so dark that just complaining or giving lessons to people is not productive. Do you understand what I mean?
So you think humour can be more politically effective than anger, then?
Oh, yes, definitely. For me, as well as in my research as an artist, I have found that humour – dark humour – is the most potent way to communicate real criticism.
Some of your tracks, and also the fact that you’re Canadian, reminds me of another artist that wasn’t afraid to be outspoken, Peaches. I don’t know if Peaches was an influence on your career at all.
I didn’t know her when I started my career. I think I heard Fuck the Pain Away for the first time in 2019. I had already released a couple of albums, by that stage, including Working Class Woman, with Work It on it.
But ever since I’ve heard of her, I’ve been really loving her. I’ve met her. She’s amazing. And I really like her political side. She’s very eloquent in interviews. And I love her music.
I wouldn’t say she was an influence in crafting who I became as an artist. But I totally relate with what she does. And yes, we are both Canadian. She’s from Toronto, though. I’m French Canadian, from Montreal. So it’s not exactly the same culture, but it very much connects.
You’re releasing now on Deewee [Soulwax’s record label]. You’ve been on Ninja Tune in the past, and other labels as well. I spoke to the Soulwax guys a couple of years ago about what they’re doing with Deewee. It seems to me like it’s the best home for your kind of experimental style. Do you like working with Deewee and the Soulwax guys?
Of course. I would never work with a label that doesn’t give me freedom. Never.
I always send on my album and I’m like,’ this is what it is’. I’m open to suggestions or comments, but I have never done an album that had to be rewritten to please a label. I would never do that ever in my life. My artistic freedom has always been a given.
But back to your question, I’m very much in line with what David and Stephen do at Deewee. They also have a good sense of humour. We like it hard and playful, I guess. I just feel really aligned with their sound, and they’ve helped on that record with the production. It was a respectful and inspiring collaboration.
And the Soulwax remix of Work It is the one that you play live now.
Yes. Good call. And I’ll tell you why. It’s because it makes people so happy. And it makes me happy to make people happy.
I keep blending the previous song – which is Sexy Clown – blending some parts of the percussion in the choruses. I enhance what they had already done in their remix of Work It, which is that the verses are sparse and the choruses are really big.
And I enhance that even more with the mixer. I bring back with the fader some elements of the percussion and then I filter it. Anyway, but I do play their remix, but I play it in my own way.
But yeah, it makes people so happy. People love that track so much. It’s crazy. Every time, it does the trick. I can see it on people’s faces and the level of energy in the crowd. It’s great.
So when you play live, you’re kind of remixing as you’re playing. Every gig is different, pretty much, is what you’re saying?
Well, they’re slightly different. It’s pretty much the same. But yeah, I’m playing live, so it’s not like a recording.
It seems you’ve got a strong instinct for observing the kind of absurdity in everyday life. We were talking about being a contrarian earlier on. Do you think that’s a reflection of the world becoming more absurd, or are you just getting better at noticing it?
It feels like that for me, but I don’t know. Maybe it has always been. But it has been feeling like that in the last 10 years or so. The world has become more absurd. We’re going towards a dead end.
Yeah, I know what you mean. You kind of get this feeling that it’s heading towards something, whether it’s like a punk moment and a rewriting of the rules – or something more sinister. It feels strange.
More than strange, this world is collapsing. Ecologically, we’re f**ked. Humanly, there is so much violence, war, genocide, abuse of power, greed everywhere in the world. And then on the cultural level, the culture has been homogenised by social media and trends and branding.
And that, I feel, has also impacted a lot of humanity in everyday life. So to me, it feels like things have not been improving at all.
Which is why using humour to subvert this keeps us all sane, right?
I don’t know if it keeps us all sane, but it helps me to try to stay sane.
Over the years, you’ve explored topics like technology, surveillance, identity and capitalism and things like that in your music. Are there any subjects out there that kind of scare you enough that you might be inspired to make an album about it?
If I find a subject interesting, there’s no subject that can scare me. The more challenging the subject is, the more inclined I am to talk about it. I don’t question it. That’s how I feel.
Did you see the interview with Dave Clarke recently, about politics and techno?
Yeah. That the new wave or generation of DJs have completely lost their political point of view. It’s not even a topic anymore. And yes, that’s a shame because techno came from something political at first. Techno has really been commodified.
It has, but there’s still nothing better, though, than a basement with a strobe light and a smoke machine and pounding techno.
There’s nothing better than that, because that is not mainstream techno branding culture. It’s just people having fun on the dancefloor. And I still believe in that. I don’t think we have lost the ability to connect through music and dancing.
Marie Davidson performs at Whelan’s in Dublin on 1 September, presented by Selective Memory. Tickets and more information can be found here. Main photo by Nadine Fraczkowski.
