Jan. 13, 2010 - Issue #743: Broken Embraces
Julie Doiron: Close to the bone
Doiron's voice is honest in conversation and song
"I guess I've kind of told you a lot of personal stuff here, huh," she realizes with a still-quite-casual air. "If you could maybe not print any of that stuff, I'd appreciate that. Anyway ... "
As flattering as it is to think that you've gotten a Canadian indie rock icon comfortable enough to really bare all, truthfully it doesn't seem to be that hard to get Doiron to be quite revealing. Interviews with the Sackville, NB-based singer-songwriter are frequently redacted, omitting likewise maybe-too-personal details, or featuring admissions that she's perhaps talked too much. And that doesn't even begin to touch on her music, which is very often the kind of naked, confessional stuff that most people keep confined to diaries, if they have the guts to get out at all.
"I actually don't know why I do that," admits Doiron with a characteristic casualness. "I was actually just reading this book today, The Secret Language of Birthdays, and I looked up my birthday, and I think that I have no choice. It totally described me to a 't.' I think I just end up opening up a little too much in spite of myself. I'm not really sure why I do it, but I don't really know how to communicate otherwise."
It's obviously not something she has to worry too much about: she's done pretty well with it thus far. Though she began as bassist for Atlantic rockers Eric's Trip, her solo work, begun under the pseudonym Broken Girl before she switched to her birth name, has since eclipsed even those impressive credentials. The last decade, in particular, has been good to her: kicking it off with a Juno for her 1999 collaboration with Ottawa's Wooden Stars, she released some five albums on indie giant Jagjaguwar in the 2000s, including her most recent efforts, 2007's Polaris-nominated Woke Myself Up and last year's I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day, which was recently named Canadian college radio's number-one-played album of the year.
It would hardly be fair to characterize Doiron as a late bloomer, but still, it's an impressive and rare run at a time when most artists have settled firmly into an established groove in their career. Part of it just seems to be a bit of a musical maturity on her part, the marriage of her always raw, frequently introspective lyrics with a more developed and involved musicality: I Can Wonder, for instance, saw her more freely indulging some of her more upbeat, rockier roots, a decided change, but one that was obviously welcome. Doiron herself credits some of her recent collaborations, including 2008's Lost Wisdom, with Mount Eerie's Phil Elverum and frequent conspirator Fred Squire, and the more recent collection of folk standards with Squire and Attack in Black frontman Daniel Romano, creatively titled Daniel, Fred and Julie, with expanding her ideas on music.
"I don't even know of a specific way to explain it, I just know it makes me a better songwriter and a better performer, and I know that because I can see the change in myself," explains Doiron, who says she learns more from working with other musicians than she does just sitting around by herself and writing. "Maybe an obvious thing I learned from [her recent collaborations] was how easily you can make something happen: you don't have to plan for months, and it doesn't have to be that laborious. You can just sit down and record something, and if it sounds great, you do another one. It can just be that easy sometimes."
That kind of open breeziness seems like it goes a long way to explaining I Can Wonder's bouncy infectiousness and bright-eyed optimism, but as of late, it seems more and more to be leading her to the more somber and reflexive songs of her past. Though she is enjoying touring and writing as much as ever—Doiron even says she's stopped procrastinating on the latter, long her preferred method of writing—she has found most of her recent songs, which she'll be playing on this tour, are again in the tone of the searching, melancholy moods that make up a lot of her catalogue. Not that her approach has changed much, just that it seems to be the place she returns to when it's time to create.
"Maybe it was a blip," she says of I Can Wonder's upbeat mood with a laugh. "They're not really pitiful in the sense of 'Oh woe is me,' but they're a bit sorrowful, and there's some realization of what the mistakes I've made were. Almost all my songs are written during a time when I'm trying to understand what's happening, or figure out what to do next, or how I got here. Or just figuring out how to move around in the world, deal with my mistakes."
That's where Doiron the songwriter seems to clash with Doiron the person the most. Though she is open across the board, she seems much more prone to introspection and brooding with a guitar in hand, whereas her speech tends to be filled with laughs and asides and a palpable optimism. But Doiron doesn't see anything strange about it; for her, each side allows for the other, helping her deal with the natural ebb and flow of life.
"I'm not a depressive person. I love to laugh and have fun, I love people with a good sense of humour, and I love going out with people and having a good time, and for the most part I think I try to keep a positive attitude," she says, again with a lack of guile that's disarming. "But I also have a lot of times in my life that have been really heavy, that I've had to deal with, these things that are beyond me that are hard to accept.
"I mean, I don't wallow in that, as a person I think I'm all right, and I try my best," she continues. "But there are times when life is hard, and you have to figure out how to deal with that. But that's life, it's life, and everybody has ways of dealing with that: some people write songs about it, some people do art, some people hold it in and don't talk to anyone about it. I guess I feel lucky that I can let it out, and people can identify with it in some level in their own lives." V
Wed, Jan 20 (7 pm)
Julie Doiron
With Attack in Black
The ARTery, $10 – $12
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