Liz Van Deuq's Interview

– Hello. Can you trace your history a little? How did you come to music? to composition? to the stage?
– I started with piano at 6, then I studied music, university of musicology. In my history there are institutional things like diplomas, and spare time to make bands of today’s music since that was what I was interested in at the beginning: being a keyboardist for funk or jazz bands, with my cousins. I played in cover bands too, did some village dance, but I was interested in writing songs. My 1st song was written at 17. But it never was something obvious. I started to write songs at the moment I listened to chanson records, that I received. I worked as a radio journalist for 5 years, first at a small nonprofit radio, then at Vibration. You’re in the centre of lots of appeals to listen to music, to go out, to see concerts, and it became an activity. And as a journalist you see quite a few artists and you want to see how it works. I’ve been a professional for 8 years now.
– Where does your pseudonym come from?
– From Van (Vanessa), Deuq (Dequiedt) and Liz because I liked it. And it sounded a little German and Dutch. I liked the idea because they have rigour which we haven’t and which I like, which influences me. Ludwig van Beethoven...

– On stage you tell that you wanted to do heavy metal music. Is it just a joke or is there an element of truth?
– I really registered to a course of saturated voice.
– There are courses for that?
– There are. Some people study how the voice works to avoid being damaged when you’re in saturation. I went there because I wanted to see how it was. So here is the element of truth: I really did this course, it really hurt afterwards. Seems I didn’t understand the instructions not to hurt myself.
Then, no, I never really intended to have a metal band. However I admit it fascinates me that metal can be loved as musical aesthetics. I find it good, it’s a modern music style, which interests the indie scene a lot. These people, at least the amateurs, or the semi-pro ones, are kind and open-minded as it can’t be seen in our milieu where we are very attentive to our fees, to the conditions.
I don’t like metal too much, in any case for my ears health. But I find these persons adorable and they are often very good instrument technicians. So I’ve got a sort of curious but distanced amazement because I like them, they are teddy bears.

– When you’ve told you do “chanson à texte” (lyrics songs), does the phrase suit you?
– Yes because I spend a lot of time writing the lyrics. Maybe it has a pompous or intellectual connotation but it doesn’t upset me.
– Whereas "heart is a muscle" ["le cœur est un muscle" is one of her songs (translator’s note)], your songs seem to be divided into 2 veins: the astute-amusing vein, and the ethereal-refined vein. You subscribe to this analysis?
– I do, that’s what emerged from the 2nd album. When I start writing some evidences appear. "Well, this one’s going to be a quiet song." A notion of slow tempo or sweetness is going to appear.
– Having these 2 sides is an intentional choice?
– No it isn’t. My aim is writing songs to treat myself. I restrain my longing to write depressing songs.
– Why?
– I think when you write depressing things you depress yourself. Because when you write you live with your writing, for hours and hours. I can’t help doing a few from time to time because melancholy is part of the songwriters’ grammar, whether you like it or not. But I think being too much into melancholy may be bad for your health.
– And then you have to play them live regularly.
– Repeating the song, on stage... doing one year with a melancholic set only is kind of a pity. A show must contain big variations of emotions: laughter, melancholy, joy, hope... You make yourself live these emotions, which is sane.
– On the contrary, I interviewed Tamino. According to him you must have the courage to look at melancholy in the eyes. So he uses it but a different way.
– That’s interesting, yes. Let’s see how it goes over several years. It’s a bit like the speech of meditation.

– Your 2nd album, released end 2018, is called Vanités (vanities). Why this title?
– Because my 1st album was called Anna-Liz which came from Liz, and Vanités comes from Van.
– All right, I just didn’t think of this.
– Then, the 2nd meaning, on the sleeve, Bruno from Néômme record company drew small skulls, things like that, and there was a form of vanity in the medieval sense of the word, i.e. a skull you place on a table which reminds you of the reality of death.
The 3rd meaning: in my opinion making art is a form of arrogance, a form of free deed. In my opinion being artist is somehow pretentious. But I hope I’m not conceited.
– It’s to refrain from it?
– Yes, maybe.

– In your concerts, you have a kind of compulsory figure, you call the "minute poem". Where does it come from?
– It came from a collective tour with artists, at a time we started to insert a poem in the middle of songs. It felt good because it did a breath. It was the same all nights. As solo I said to myself that doing a poem was a good idea, that I had to do something attached to the present moment and to the place so that it is different, it is the required but customized parenthesis. And it does lots of good. Well, it’s a constraint, it’s all the same half an hour before the show, when you have technical things to set, talks with the technicians to be sure everything’s OK, nothing’s forgotten, the memory of the show...
– Do you write it at the last moment?
– I write it the very day, one hour before.
– So they all call you for the soundchecks and you say "no no I do my poem"?
– Yeah. But no, I do the soundchecks for real, I’m forced to, I have to take my mark, and for the lights as well.

– You claim shyness, nearly like a flag.
– Do I?
– That’s what I felt.
– I’ve been living with it for a long time and it’s a part of me somehow, in some situations. It’s a shield too. Maybe it’s just a habit. A bad habit? I don’t know.
– A lot of artists are shy.
– You speak of shyness on stage or in life?
– In life.
– I think you have to be shy in life.
– Do you think shy people are inexorably penalized in today’s society, or on the contrary that they’re a chance to solve the world’s issues?
– Maybe there’s a space between. I think it’s simply politeness and manners. You can’t say everything you think, because there are codes, and you don’t know them all. Sometimes you inadvertently brave them, you can hurt people. I think in psychology shyness can be explained by a phenomenon of having been ashamed as a child, having said something and eventually being restrained... I’ve read Isabelle Filliozat, because I’m interested into emotions and how it works. Psycho is the dictionary of emotions, that I like to open to understand how I work, how I can use it, how to write it, how to describe it, how to shout it. And then I’m French actually, and I think many French are shy because we’re raised this way. In countries like the United States or Canada, people don’t have this relation to shyness. I was in schools where you had to raise your finger if you wanted to speak. It’s ancestral. My father, at the table, in his family, wasn’t allowed to speak.

– I propose you to have a look at the list of the albums reviewed in japprecie, and tell me which ones you know, which ones you like?
– Clara Luciani, the bass parts are really cool.
– Oh yes, I noticed too, and it reminded me of bass you can find in Robi’s music.
– I love Volo. It’s an extraordinary band, they’ve got it all, their lyrics are very very good. They are from Tours. They are prolific. They tour all the time. It’s a model band.
– They’ve got it all, except success they deserve, maybe?
– Actually success is a side idea in my opinion; you can feel you have your place in this business even without success. People don’t know all I’ve done and how I live things. Simply my 8 last years are a lot of happiness, a lot of energy to do concerts far away, the post-concert depressions, you are permanently in emotion flow. You do this job by curiosity and maybe because you are interested in success, but actually you even can live from this job without having success that mass culture throws on you.
– True. But there’s a minimum all the same to...
– …live.
– That’s it.
– I live. My 3 first years were really difficult financially speaking, and then there were positive years. Now it comes back down because the record doesn’t sell too much. While growing old you ask yourself whether you go on or not, what you’re going to do... I think having success is very convenient, but it isn’t an end in itself. And also, what are you ready to do to enter the business? I don’t know if the experience is easy to live.
– You have to be armed, to be armoured.
– Yes. But nobody’s armoured.
Rover is a magnificent voice.
Daran, he’s in Montreal. I met him at SACEM; he’s a friend of mine’s good pal. He works a lot too, he produces albums, he’s an enthusiast.
Pomme I saw her on stage. Nice.
And then Yann Pierre I have to see him in concert.
Agnes Obel it’s cool, I like it. Besides I’ve got this album. It’s magnificent, the sound effects, the sound vocabulary.
– Do you have some more to suggest to Appreciators?
– I suggest: Clio, Lily Luca, Clarika, Bernard Joyet, Chloé Lacan, Nicolas Jules. And before all, give in to temptation to discover artists on stage here and there. The chanson stage is magnificent.