Between Translations and Timezones with Laure Briard
15/02/2024 Kate Middeleer
We scan the crew of people gathered in the Bangalow Bowlo and spot her in the back, flanked between band-members. Thursday, January 10th would mark Laure’s first performance in Byron and our first time meeting in person. Hopefully not the last. In a simple black blouse and patterned slips, Laure has a sense of calm in aesthetic that defies her striking presence behind the mic.
sur la piste (on the dance floor)
je suis vraiment troublée (I’m very trouble)
viens m’embrasser (come and kiss me)
le truc, c’est que je m’ennuie” (the thing is, I’m bored)
(Sur La Piste de Danse, 2016)
Having arrived three days prior, she’s only in Australia for two more weeks. She has twins at home in Paris.
“My babies are one year and a half. They are in France with my parents and step-mother. So they are cool. But it’s difficult”.
c’est la vie (that’s life)
je me souviens qu’on dansait (I remember we were dancing)
dansons encore une heure avant ça (let’s dance for another hour)
(C’est la Vie, 2015)
We sit with her on the small blue couches tucked between the pool table and the women’s toilets. Back straight, legs crossed, she seems slightly confused to have found herself performing at a small-town bowlo on a mid-January Thursday evening, but pleased nonetheless.
It’s her first time back in this part of the world in twelve years, since she accompanied a boyfriend who was touring Australia as a drummer for Tame Impala.
Now she’s here strictly business. At our pleasure. If you are lucky enough to catch sight of her on stage you can see she’s riding a thrill whose first stop is Byron, next Brisbane, Melbourne, and Wollongong. Somewhat psychedelic, a little soft and a lot of soul, Laure walks skillfully between The Beatles and a techno-romantic.
Just two months prior, she was in Brazil, a favorite on her list and home to the neo-psychedelic rock band Boogarins. She tells us that making music in Portuguese had been a seemingly unfeasible fantasy until one day on a tour through Texas and Mexico, her ticket-in appeared. This was in the form of the Brazilian foursome and soon-to-be long-time friends and collaborators.
“You can do it,” they replied when she told them her dream of playing in Brazil.
“How?”
“We can help you!”
“It was completely unexpected. They helped me,” Laure tells us. “Four months later we went to Brazil. And I started to write songs in Brazilian. I didn’t speak Brazilian”.
Laure went on to record two EPs with Boogarins in Brazil, ‘Eu Voo’ (2021), and ‘Coração Louco’ (2018). That was five years ago. Today we listened to her sing ‘Supertrama’ on stage at the Bolo. Her genre-defying music and soulful voice lent itself well to Bossa Nova. She addressed the crowd mostly in English, sometimes flickering to French. To Laure, each language is sacred in its own right and each song is devoted from inception to its own language.
“In my mind, it’s a different process writing in the different languages,” she says. “There are some things I can’t sing in French. But I can in other languages. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s a feeling”.
Select song titles:
une évasion / Escape (Révélation, 2015)
je m’en vais / I am leaving (Révélation, 2015)
não me diz nada / don’t tell me anything (Eu Voo, 2021)
on dit que je ne suis pas sage / they say I am not wise (Sorcelliere, 2017)
il a fallu / he failed (sur la piste de danse, 2016)
ca va aller / it’ll be ok (Révélation, 2015)
Music Video link:
youtube.com/watch?v=L3LENe6YnYY