I pushed the writing of this blog back and back and back again. And I tried and I tried and I tried writing something about it… But being so new, so fresh and so real, I guess it is still hard for me to put words on it… The only thing I know for sure right now is that there couldn’t be any better way to finish the album “Vague Souvenir”… By its lyrics and its music, it is as much a conclusion to a chapter in a specific journey, as well as the beginning of another one, and yet it is only another step in one lifelong journey…

And what I want for you is to be able to fully grasp the lyrics of this wonderful poetry, that you can see translated in English below…

Enjoy!

– Stephanie

“I always believed that “Old Noisy Friend” was embodying that fragile state of vulnerability from which true compassion and love can turn a desperate confession into a redemptive rebirth… I knew by heart its faithless cry-out for an uplifting awakening and its deepest need for forgiveness and redemption, but it’s only after playing the song for the first time after so many years that I realized that many more colors had yet to be unfolded and much more light had yet to be revealed, thus turning a song about being a resigned despair and a faded whisper into being a living testimony of merciful absolution and contemplative avowal of forgiveness. That gave an unfiltered honesty to the words and a heartening perspective to what had been a profoundly dark and heavy song…” Read More »

July 4th, 2012
3:00am

Vague Souvenir, O.N.F

Today has been a crazy day for me… I needed to go out, and planned on coming back to the studio around 11pm, at best. Well, that is, until the guys told me that they would start the recording of the song O.N.F at 9pm. And somehow, I knew, I just knew, that I needed to be there. I wanted to be there…

This song has never appeared before on any of the albums from the band… They wanted to, but finally changed their minds. Not because it wasn’t good. To the contrary. There is something very special about this song, more than words can say… But the other songs won over it. I guess it’s because the song was so emotionally close to Alex, and especially, that they all lacked courage to face what it truly meant. Like an open wound that you do not wish to expose once more… At least, it is how I felt about this song… But getting back to it for the “Vague Souvenir” album was an incredibly daring move, yet so full of self-confidence. Just as if finally, the wound had been closed, healed, but left a scar… A scar that will always be there, as a reminder of what happened, of what they experienced, of who they were… But that does not define them anymore… Something that is part of them, without “being” them… Read More »

For me, the reminiscence of emotional souvenirs always unexpectedly awakes in tidal flashes of colors and fuzzy sparks of late night memories. “Sketching Dreams” is the result of such flashes and sparks… Arisen ghosts of a past that’s never far away enough to be called a forgotten evanescence, shades of fragile moments I wish forgiven, I wish to be free from, specters of sentiments I wish would remain hidden in the deepest of all blurred whispers… just as I wish for the phantoms of my profound anguishes to vanish in the halo of the neon lights I feed with illusive white lies, hoping that by dressing my darkest despairs with a joyful cloak of sacred remembrance, I would find myself some sleep again. But sometimes dreams ain’t what we wish for… as they might remain the pale incarnation of what we may deny our soul to be unshackled from… as they may turn the brightest of all dreams into an out of focus type of glazed revision of reality… but as you let go, you can instinctively start sketching and daubing elements of what used to be invisible and out of sight. And then, the dream is yours again to paint with high hope and jubilant love… Read More »

Correcting the text in French has been very difficult… You need to understand that in French, while words are pronounced the very same way, they change in their spelling depending of what other words they are related to. And with short sentences without a verb, with almost no punctuation at all, every option could have been good. I could have read the same text and gotten 3 totally different meanings with no problem. Countless times I asked Alex “to what word is this one related?”, “this word goes with this one, or this one, or perhaps this other one?”, “is it you as the author who’s saying this, or is it the character from the text?”, “what is the general idea behind this line or sentence?”. After the first reading, when came the time to correct, my document was filled with red, orange, green and bold characters, all marking questions I had. There was only a very few black words remaining, to Alex’s dismay. He never liked explaining his text and their meanings… But he had no choice.
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The first time the band performed this song live was during the European Tour… in England, I remember the song was welcomed very warmly, even though people did not understand what the lyrics were about, the song being in French. The shows have always been an opportunity for the band to not only perform and share their own songs, but also to share with the people they love some songs that had inspired them over the years… During the European Tour, “Des Armes” was one of them.

An outstanding text, written by Leo Ferré, and adapted into music by Noir Désir, one of Alex’s all time favorite bands, for their texts, their music, and their intensity. And this intensity, Your Favorite Enemies knows it very well… So when the decision came to add “Des Armes” to “Vague Souvenir”, I think it was pretty natural for everyone… This song had accompanied them through some of the most significant moments of a band: a first tour in Europe… Read More »