Yoann Lemoine: Still in his Golden Age

A man with a brilliantly trimmed beard wearing a black baseball cap. That imagery points to Yoann Lemoine, better known by his stage name “Woodkid.” He’s a French musician who excels in making chamber pop music. He was born in 1983 in central-eastern France. He is also a graphic designer and a director for music videos, in which some of the notable artists he’s worked with include Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, and Harry Styles, among others.

Yoann worked with different artists for a while. He eventually came out with his first album, The Golden Age, in 2013. Some tracks were previously released as a single EP in 2011; “Iron” was the only one to make it to the full release.

Chamber pop is a genre that combines pop or rock with classical music, typically featuring string and brass instruments as well as pianos. Dynamic shifts to create dramatic listening experiences are a common trend in the genre, and it’s definitely present in Woodkid’s work. I find that it creates an almost surreal tone, as if it’s the sound from a vivid dream.

His lyrics are very solid, too. He’s the lead singer in all his songs, and despite having a noticeably heavy French accent, his English singing is clearly understandable. A lot of his work is deeply emotional and based around his prior life experiences. They deal with topics like relationships with the formation and separation of couples, growing up and leaving childhood, depression, and other heavy themes.

Yoann Lemoine performing at the “Melt! Festival” in 2013. Photo by Henry Laurisch.

I found out about Woodkid through an online music forum, where one user recommended “The Great Escape,” a song from the first album. At that time, The Golden Age was his only studio release aside from the Desierto movie soundtrack. His latest one, S16, had only been announced.

For a while, my favourite song of his was “The Great Escape,” which starts slow and quickly speeds up. It’s about finding freedom from problems and meeting with a romantic partner. Yoann himself is openly gay, which makes a lot of his songs about romance (including this one) much more personal for those who can relate. In a 2017 radio interview with Têtu, he talks about “the desire to build one’s identity as one wishes.”

One of my other favourites from that album is “I Love You,” which is more of a pop song with the same orchestral feel as the others. It sounds unique, with a scream sound acting in sync with the bass. The lyrics are emotional; it’s about lovers drifting apart in a one-sided relationship.

Like my previous blog where I talked about Avenged Sevenfold’s Life Is But a Dream, there was a seven-year gap between The Golden Age and S16. Like his first album, Woodkid released a few singles leading up to the release to build hype. There was even an ARG (alternate reality game) website called Adaptive Minerals, with cryptic details about the new tracks. I didn’t follow along with it myself, but I paid attention to what other people discovered as more content was gradually added.

As someone who’s been a Woodkid fan for several years, I want to gush about his music. “Run Boy Run” is the second track from The Golden Age, and it’s arguably one of his most popular songs. It was featured in TV commercials and the trailer for Dying Light, as well as the film adaptation of Divergent. The lyrics are simple yet catchy and the pace is rapid, but it’s ultimately a message about pressing on through hardship. He also wrote a song called “Guns for Hire” for Arcane, a Netflix show based on the popular video game League of Legends.

S16 is much like The Golden Age. It’s more of the same style of music, but the production value is higher due to his years of experience. It was released in 2020, and I picked up a CD copy from a record store soon after. The first track, “Goliath,” is my favourite from this album. It has a music video with very compelling imagery surrounding the idea of the relationship between individual people and the figurative monster created through excessive industrialisation.

Woodkid, “Goliath,” 2020.

My opinion about the first track being good doesn’t discredit the rest of S16, though. It’s like a continuation of his first album, where he channels his life experiences and personal struggles to make a very compelling narrative.

Ratings weren’t everything for Woodkid when the album was in production. The sudden success of The Golden Age left him with the problem of living up to expectations, which might have been why the gap between releases was so long.

In a 2020 interview with NBHAP (Nothing But Hope And Passion) when discussing his initial success, he said, “I had to step away from the idea that success is necessarily something you can count with numbers. I had to realize that it also is something you can feel intimately without being definable. It can be about pride, about creative accomplishment or about joy you can have with many things in your life. And I had lost this joy for some time after my massive success. For that reason, I needed time to redefine my standards.”

I’m a huge Woodkid fan, that’s obvious enough. I find his music to be a refreshing take on chamber pop, and I hope more attention will come his way in the future. Whether he collaborates with more artists or goes solo, I’m looking forward to hearing more from him.

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Hey, it’s Lucas. I’m a student from Canada who’s just a little too into heavy metal and video games. Thankfully, one of those is useful for this blog. I’m an avid fan of cats (yes, I will pet them if I can) and a bird lover, too. I love a good plot twist, so I especially love it when artists take an unexpected turn with their work. You can expect to hear about rock, metal, or punk when you read my posts. Remember: it’s not about the blog, but the blogger behind it.

Avenged Sevenfold - Is Change Always Good?

Have you ever tried to get back into an artist’s work after not following them for a while? Maybe you tried watching some newer episodes of a TV show or listened to a band’s new songs, only to find that it was totally different than how you remembered it being? That’s not too uncommon, as it turns out. In this case, however, the change was worth the wait.

I’ve been an avid listener of Avenged Sevenfold’s discography for years. I first heard their music through a crossover in an older Call of Duty game, but I found more of their songs while trying Spotify for the first time around 2017. It got me back into listening to metal.

It didn’t take long for me to notice the differences between their albums. The first few are rough and less polished, being a product of the (very early) 2000s. But they quickly refined their sound and became a staple of American metal, growing more popular by the late 2000s.

Photo taken by Gino037 from Wikimedia Commons.

From City of Evil to Nightmare, they just couldn’t lose when it came to ratings. Then Hail to the King was released. It’s not a bad album, not at all. It’s packed with quality metal tracks, just like the albums before it. But, in my opinion, it just doesn’t do anything unique. Many of the songs sound sort of familiar, like the structure and lyrics have been heard elsewhere.  It simply took too much inspiration from metal songs that were already popular.

The band took notice of this, and they tried a new approach from there. In 2016 they made a big change and put out something new, The Stage. It’s experimental, with some tracks featuring acoustic guitars and brass instruments while others include unusual time signatures. The last song, “Exist,” is their longest studio track and has an outro spoken by Neil deGrasse Tyson. It wasn’t too similar to their old stuff, but it also wasn’t a total departure from how they’d always been. The first song in this album, also titled “The Stage,” took the throne as my favourite song for a long while.

Aside from another Call of Duty tie-in in 2018 and a few compilations, the band went silent for years. Then, in 2023, they finally released a new album called Life Is But a Dream. The excitement from their fanbase was through the roof, and I know I was cheering alongside them. By that point I’d gotten all caught up with their music, so to have something new was great. I gave it a listen when it dropped.

Art by Wes Lang, courtesy of Warner Records Inc.

They’d always changed a few things about their music between albums, but this toys with the idea of absurdism and really sounds like nothing they’ve made before, which shocked me. It lacks consistency and it’s proud of that. It’s still metal, but the use of unusual instruments, audio effects, and rough transitions all creates an extremely interesting experience. It’s so weird, but it’s also so catchy and memorable that the weirdness ends up making it better. It’s refreshing to hear something that isn’t regurgitated guitar riffs and reused beats, which makes me glad they changed directions after Hail to the King. It’s hard to describe with words alone, so I’d like to encourage listening to it on YouTube, where they’ve made it available.

I even saw them perform many of the new songs live at their 2023 North American Tour, where they came to Ontario on July 24th. I noticed that the excitement in the crowd was far more noticeable when they played their older hits as opposed to tracks from Life Is But a Dream, so maybe it’s just not for everyone.

Nonetheless, I’m excited to see where they take it from here. They could do a return to form where they play it safe, or they could go further with their experimental streak and really make something special. Whatever the future holds for Avenged Sevenfold, whatever they change next, I’m sure it will be… creative. Good or bad, that’s up to the listener.

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Hey, it’s Lucas. I’m a student from Canada who’s just a little too into heavy metal and video games. Thankfully, one of those is useful for this blog. I’m an avid fan of cats (yes, I will pet them if I can) and a bird lover, too. I love a good plot twist, so I especially love it when artists take an unexpected turn with their work. You can expect to hear about rock, metal, or punk when you read my posts. Remember: it’s not about the blog, but the blogger behind it.

Punk in North America and the U.K. – Who was Louder?

American punk emerged from the garages of aspiring bands, but British punk gave it a signature edgy twist that North Americans adopted. Finding its way over the sea from New York to London and beyond, it reflected a wilder shade of rock than what came before. Being a punk fan, I want to save my thoughts for after my overview. As with anything that goes international, it just needs to be a competition; who did it better?

American punk spilled out of New York and Michigan in the 1970s, exposing the world to bands like the New York Dolls and MC5. Over in London, the Sex Pistols were formed to promote a clothing store. They rose to infamy with tracks like “Anarchy in the U.K.,” and “God Save the Queen.” Other influential U.K. groups like the Clash came together in the mid-70s, inspired by the Sex Pistols’ fresh flavour of rebellion. Britian’s music scene was changed with provocative lyrics and no-holds-barred attitudes.

However, the Sex Pistols broke up. A messy separation and successful bans from the government, mostly because of the anarchic nature of their songs, left a void to be filled. Fortunately, their tours in North America inspired like-minded groups to pick up the pieces. Black Flag formed in 1977 in Los Angeles, renewing the hardcore side of punk with singles like “Nervous Breakdown,” and “Police Story.”

“Sex Pistols in Paradiso.” Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, taken by Koen Suyk.

Ask different punk fans which bands sang better from where, and you’ll get many answers. The British wave of the 70s aimed to be different from the stagnant rock scene of the time. American offerings ranged from well-composed complaints to directionless rambling. Both shared a mutual distaste towards the government. Canadians jumped in with bands like D.O.A. in the late 70s, proving the growing influence of hardcore punk rock. What’s ultimately consistent between the N.A. and the U.K. is the overly political tone, delivered in what I’d call delightfully angsty doses. The answer here is really a matter of opinion.

At its core, punk is all about counterculture. Controversy is fuel for the punk engine. Politics are inseparable from the genre, we can’t deny that. The Sex Pistols angered authorities with lyrics like, “Anarchy for the UK / It’s coming sometime and maybe / I give a wrong time stop at traffic line / Your future dream is a shopping scheme” (Sex Pistols, 1976) to share their frustrations with the turn towards cheap consumer goods. MDC tuned in from San Francisco in the 1980s and expressed far-left political views. Their sound, often rough and unrefined, gave their discography a genuine feel. They blasted American icons, celebrities and businesses alike, targeting American fast food by saying, “Change from your five / Ankles deep in blood / Make it your career / Sell billions every year” (MDC, 1982) in “Corporate Deathburger.” We can see that punk has similar ideas no matter where it comes from. The nature of these ideas isn’t always the same, though. In my opinion, the biggest difference between N.A. and U.K. punk is the sound. When looking purely at the instrumental side of things, British punk tends to sound refined and concise, while American and Canadian punk is rougher around the edges. Of course, there are exceptions to this on both sides.

The punk scene has certainly slowed since the 70s and 80s, but it hasn’t disappeared. MDC, for example, is still around and continues to make politically charged tracks to this day. The internet is a great tool for discovering less mainstream artists, which is how I got into punk.

So, the question remains. North America vs the United Kingdom, who has the best punk music? Well, it depends on what you’re looking for. They both tend to have sarcasm dripping through their lyrics, but the North American stuff can be more satirical at times. Both are genuine and both have deeper motivations. I like almost all of it, but American punk is my favourite. In the end, it’s up to the audience to decide. No matter the answer you, I, or anyone else give, we’re all punks if we want to be.

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Hey, it’s Lucas. I’m a student from Canada who’s just a little too into heavy metal and video games. Thankfully, one of those is useful for this blog. I’m an avid fan of cats (yes, I will pet them if I can) and a bird lover, too. I love a good plot twist, so I especially love it when artists take an unexpected turn with their work. You can expect to hear about rock, metal, or punk when you read my posts. Remember: it’s not about the blog, but the blogger behind it.