Enfnts Terribles

You released Phoenix last week, how have you experienced all these reactions from your fans and journalists?

I’m mostly really happy because I did it for myself. The album took so long to create, almost three years to write and record. Putting this out was a big relief for me, especially because I’m really proud of the album. I grew a lot personally and artistically during the period of creating the album, so I was really happy to put it out. I got amazing feedback so far, which has obviously been an incredible feeling. It’s something very nice to hear that other people can relate to all these personal things I’ve put on the album. I try not to read all the articles too much because negative things do affect me, but I’m super happy with the feedback I got so far.

The album debuted at number one on the Canadian album charts. How did you react to that milestone when you found out?

I was really grateful and excited. It was definitely beyond our expectations for that to happen and especially because it stayed on number one for two weeks in a row, which was super special because not a lot of Canadian artists have that with an album. It’s been a crazy few weeks, but I am definitely super proud of the album.

Did the album really feel like your debut after all these years of making music?

It’s a little bit of both. We have toured a lot with the two EPs, and it helped me gain experience, but it definitely feels like a first album on a lot of levels. Whenever you release EPs or singles, you don’t have access to the same kind of media platforms as you would with an album. Ever since I released Phoenix and started promoting it, we had opportunities we couldn’t have with the previous singles and EPs.

On the creative and symbolic side, it feels like my debut album. The EPs are little groups of the few songs I’ve written in my teenage years and the beginning of adulthood. For this album, I wanted to make it from scratch. We wrote brand-new songs about the things I experienced, and it was an actual investment of three years of my life working on it. Even though this is my first album, I don’t feel like a new artist without any experience because I was lucky enough to tour a lot. I’m kind of in the middle, I’d say.

In what dimension were Montreal and its bilingual culture an inspiration to you?

Even for just the languages that I use in my music, it’s absolutely very representative of the place I grew up. Montreal is a super bilingual city, and so was my childhood. My family is Francophone, but I’ve had English-speaking friends. I was always surrounded by both, so that’s why it feels very natural for me to sing in both languages.

Montreal is not only super bilingual but also very multicultural and you have influences from everywhere. There are big Asian, Italian, Irish, etc. communities. Not only musically but also on the culinary, visual, or language-speaking aspect, everything cultural is influenced by tons of different things. I’ve always been exposed to different kinds of music, culture, and sources of inspiration in Montreal, so it definitely affected my musical taste and art in general.

Why are the majority of the songs in English?

I’m more comfortable writing in English. It has always been harder for me to write in French, but I do find it very important to write in both languages. I love singing in French, and I feel very close to my French songs because there’s this extra effort. Maybe there’s a little bit of an extra distance that I have with English, where I can just write without asking myself as many questions as I do in French. The distance to English helps me to be a bit more spontaneous, but I do work really hard on my French songs, I just don’t finish them super quickly.

You’re heading on the Phoenix tour in 2022. What are you planning for these shows?

All these songs were written thinking of how they would turn out in a live context. Music makes the most sense when it’s shared and happening in a live context, so this tour will revolve around the music and sharing these moments. We’re also going to try to explore new versions of the songs and playing around with them. I want to approach the live show like I did building the album. The main goal is to create something liberating and freeing because I miss performing and feeling the energy of a crowd so much. I’m going to rediscover my music, so that will be very special.

‘Phoenix’ is out on all platforms and tickets to her Phoenix Tour in 2022 are available on Charlotte Cardin’s website.

Pictures by Jean Pierrot and Gaëlle Leroyer.