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May 1, 2024Olivia Martinez

Interview: Pomme Takes Time to Watch the Seasons Bloom in Modern Opera, ‘Saisons’

Pomme’s ambitious new album ‘Saisons’ tells the story of nature’s cycles as an orchestral modern opera of her own unique creation.

Stream: ‘Saisons’ – Pomme

With this album, I wanted to be part of a whole… to be a secondary character in a huge story: Nature’s story and cycles.

**If there is one thing that Pomme’s new album, Saisons, proves for sure, it is that she does not plan on growing complacent in her musical career.**

Having released her previous album, consolation, in 2022, Pomme (née Claire Pommet) did not waste a single minute in getting started on her next project, this time with even more effort placed on collaboration and orchestration.

According to Pomme herself, this short turnaround time actually felt like slowing down. “I know it’s quite funny,” she reflects on the process, “‘cause slowing down for me equals releasing an album quite quickly after my latest… but I see it as a projection of what I’m aiming for: peace, beauty, and humans living in harmony with nature.”

Pomme leans fully into nature’s calendar in the structure of the album itself, splitting the music into four sections. Each section represents a different season, with three songs per season representing the twelve months of the year. The spring section of the album is called “le temps des fleurs,” or “the time of the flowers.” Summer is named “perseides,” after the famous shower of shooting stars that floods the summer sky. Fall is fittingly called “magie mauve,” or “purple magic,” while winter is called “carte de noël,” or “Christmas card.”

To accompany the album visually, Pomme has been releasing short films to encompass the different seasons as a whole, rather than creating individual music videos for each song.

dans tes rêves sous la neige
percent les couleurs
c’est la trêve de l’hiver
et le temps des fleurs
dis mois
où se cachait le soleil
tout ce temps là

Translation:
In your dreams under the snow
The colors come piercing through
Here comes the winter break
And the time for flowers to grow
Tell me
Where was the sun hiding all this time?

“_mar le temps des fleurs,” – Pomme

Collaborators on this project include Aaron Dessner (The National), Flavien Berger, and an orchestration conducted by MALVINA. “I felt like we were creating the soundtrack for an old movie, or an interactive painting, and it was so interesting to have (MALVINA’s) vision, and other collaborators’ visions too (Aaron and Flavien) on what the seasons represent for them,” Pomme remarks fondly.

It is clear that the album is meant to be listened to from front to back in one sitting. The delicate moments and compositions of each song meld into each other as seamlessly as the months themselves meld together in time. Each has its own distinct flavor, but none exist as completely without the rest.

Pomme 'Saisons' © Lawrence Fafard — Pomme ‘Saisons’ © Lawrence Fafard

Nature is so beautiful and I wanted to picture it as it is today because I’m afraid seasons won’t survive in a near future.

**Pomme references Disney’s Fantasia (1940) as a dreamscape to which her mind traveled often while writing the opera.**

She invites listeners to “lie down on a thick carpet and imagine our dream cartoon” while consuming the record as well. In a world full of fast-paced, algorithmic single releases, all disconnected within an artist’s Tiktok-centered discography, it can be difficult to listen to a completely new album from front to back. Luckily, Pomme turns this historical custom into an exciting afternoon’s activity rather than a tedious task. Whether you speak French fluently or not, the album paints colorful pictures through its graceful orchestration and whimsical melodic texture. And if you are looking for more visual stimulation, the accompanying short films offer a vivid journey to assist the listener’s imagination.

Pomme shares her favorite lyric of the album, “je ne suis pas encore là où tu m’attends,” which translates to “I’m not where you expect me to be yet.” This lyric is repeated during “_apr le temps des fleurs,” over the string arrangement as it transitions from the stillness of March, to the stirring rain of April’s showers, and then to the vibrancy of May’s flowers, as the saying goes.

“For me, it’s an allegory of spring because humanity is impatient for it to come, but also could apply to a relationship and someone saying ‘please, give me some time, I’m not there yet, I need time and space to grow,’” Pomme observes of the lyric’s layered meaning.

I want to be able to take the time to watch the seasons bloom, take their place, die and live over and over again.

As the album comes to a close with the month of February, one can’t help but start the whole record over, circling back around to March in accordance with the seasons. But Pomme also states her feelings of protection over the seasons and their ever-fleeting cycle as the Earth itself comes under environmental threat.

She says that if her listeners are to take away one feeling from the album, it would be peace, “that it allows them to find a space in their minds and life to meditate, watch, see things with the eyes of a child. Rediscovering nature and all the beauty we can find in it. By this, I also hope it opens people’s minds on preserving that beauty and helping seasons resist.”

Saisons is now available to listen to on all of Pomme’s streaming platforms. You can also watch her short films “Saisons, le film: hiver” and “Saisons, le film: printemps” on Youtube.

— —

:: stream/purchase Saisons here ::

:: connect with Pomme here ::

A CONVERSATION WITH POMME

Atwood Magazine: I feel like it has become rare to see artists release such fleshed out concept albums, as Saisons. What inspired you to create a modern opera?

Pomme: I think I wanted to slow down. I know it’s quite funny because slowing down for me equals releasing an album quite quickly after my latest, consolation, but I see it as a projection of what I’m aiming for: Peace, beauty, humans living in harmony with nature.

With this album, I wanted to be a part of a whole. to be a secondary character in a huge story, nature’s story and cycles. I didn’t want to be the main girl or the hero because I don’t feel like it at all. I want to be able to take the time to watch the seasons bloom, take their place, die and live over and over again. I forgot to do that the last 10 or so years, and this album forced me into watching beauty in simple things again. Nature is so beautiful and I wanted to picture it as it is today because I’m afraid seasons won’t survive in a near future.

The opera form was so natural. I studied the cello and classical music when I was a kid and I think I wasn’t at peace with many aspects of it: first of all I wasn’t that good but also I feel like classical music often feels like and elitist genra. I wanted to bring people to it by mixing it with folk and chanson. Because everyone can listen to classical music.

What was it like working with an orchestra for the second half of the “spring-summer” section?

Pomme: It was such a dream. Malvina, who composed the orchestral parts, did an amazing job. I felt like we were creating the soundtrack for an old movie, or an interactive painting, and it was so interesting to have her vision, and other collaborators visions too (Aaron and Flavien) on what the seasons represent for them.

I had been wanting to work with and orchestra for years and this project felt like the right time.

Did you listen at all to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons during this time? Saisons feels like such a lovely and creatively modern twist on a similar idea.

Pomme: No I didn’t! Of course I thought about it while creating the project. But the orchestral and classical references were more: Joe Hisaishi, “Le Carnaval des animaux” from Camille Saint-Saëns, Multitudes by Feist, Bambi’s soundtrack.

I really enjoyed both of the short films you created to accompany the album. Could you talk a little bit about how you created these films and how their meaning relates to the songs?

Pomme: From the first idea of creating this album, I knew I would want it to be a multidisciplinary project.

Nature is so inspiring and so visual, so I knew I would want to create a movie for the album, like a moving illustration, and also as a way to collaborate with more friends. We co-directed the movie with my friends Hugo Pillard and Nina Richard, both amazing directors and creators. the idea was to offer another perspective on seasons, something more interactive, allowing people to be surrounded by music, images, a 360 experience. and we are going to screen the whole movie (4 seasons, 36mn) in April in Paris as an intimate concert cinema, just once. I’m so excited.

Nature is so inspiring and so visual, so I knew I would want to create a movie for the album, like a moving illustration, and also as a way to collaborate with more friends.

What is one of your favorite lyrics on the album? Why is it one of your favorites?

Pomme: I think ‘je ne suis pas encore là où tu m’attends’ in “_apr le temps des fleurs.”

For me, it’s an allegory of spring because humanity impatient for it to come but also could apply to a relationship and someone saying, ‘Please, give me some time, I’m not there yet, I need time and space to grow.’ I feel like it’s a good representation of the main point of this album: Letting people, things, grow at their natural speed. Accepting that sometimes things have to be slow (it’s definitely something that I try myself to accept and apply, haha).

What would you like your listeners to take away from this album?

Pomme: Peace. That it allows them to find a space in their minds and life to meditate, watch, see things with the eyes of a child. Re-discovering nature and all the beauty we can find in it. By this, I also hope it opens people’s mind on preserving that beauty and helping seasons resist.

For me, it’s an allegory of spring because humanity impatient for it to come but also could apply to a relationship and someone saying, ‘Please, give me some time, I’m not there yet, I need time and space to grow.’

From an outsider’s perspective, your writing style seems to have evolved a lot throughout your past albums. Could you touch on the ways that COVID and writing “consolation” during the pandemic, affected your writing process overall? How did it change your mindset and impact the way you wanted to approach Saisons, a very collaborative project?

Pomme: I think being able to stay creative during the pandemic was really a chance and a gift – I used it as much as I could. It made me realise that all this time spent creating was not a right or a due, but a huge privilege.

Between 2020 and 2021 I wrote and composed a lot of stuff. then in 2022 I didn’t have any time for writing because of releasing an album and shooting a movie, and I remember saying to myself at the beginning of 2023 that I wanted to create more space in my life for what makes me feel good, but that I also wanted to try to break my habits and ways of creating and try new stuff. That’s what I did with Saisons.

You mention wanting fans to listen to this album lying on a “thick carpet and imagine our dream cartoon.” What kind of daydreams, or “dream cartoons” did you have while writing these songs?

Pomme: Fantasia! but also Mononoke. Dreams of fairies, pixies, forests, humanity and nature living at peace together, animals, god mothers and mushrooms.

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:: stream/purchase Saisons here ::

:: connect with Pomme here ::

— — — —

Connect to Pomme on
Facebook, TikTok, Instagram

Discover new music on Atwood Magazine

 © Lawrence Fafard

an album by Pomme

Source link

May 1, 2024Guest Writer

The Parable of Peter Frampton

Where most rock n’ rollers of his generation indulge in the false comfort of nostalgia, Peter Frampton has continued to push his art. A chance encounter with the soon-to-be Rock & Roll Hall of Famer solidifies his grace and humility, on and off the stage.

by guest writer Robert J. Binney

“Show Me the Way” (live) – Peter Frampton

Finally! From gazillion-selling headliner to David Bowie’s backup to playing-through-pain elder statesman, Peter Frampton is where he belongs.

His combination of raw musicianship, pop songwriting chops, and teen idol looks may have put him on the map, but his grace and humility – on stage and off – is what a “hall of fame” should represent.

Where most rock n’ rollers of his generation indulge in the false comfort of nostalgia, Frampton has continued to push his art. One experience from a cold night just over a decade ago exemplifies this graciousness.

Horizontal freezing rain pelted Philadelphia’s Tower Theater. The show let out just past 11 PM – minutes shy of the three-hour mark – and trains heading downtown ran every 15 minutes. The Tower is technically in a suburb of Philadelphia, so there’s plenty of parking for the minivans that trek into “the city” and not a lot of foot traffic slushing toward the city-bound platform. Surprisingly, few concertgoers had stayed until the end of the show.

Ten minutes into Frampton’s set, the sold-out house was on its feet, three thousand hips shaking to the call-and-response of “Show Me the Way” and half an hour later, serenading plastic cups of chardonnay and swaying to “Baby I Love Your Way.”

These were the songs of their adolescence, of drinking cans of Schmidt’s down the Shore and playing spin-the-bottle in wood-paneled rec rooms, of a time before being married to the lump in the Eagles jersey next to them. The sounds of the Bicentennial. Now, thirty-some years and some number of kids later, “letting loose” usually meant wives disco-dancing to “Shakedown Street” with their girlfriends at some strip-mall tavern, their date’s gaze flicking between the wall of big screens and the dance floor, turned on by the sight of ankle bracelets pinned under pantyhose.

So getting out was big – this isn’t some shitty DJ at Nardi’s or the Geator with the Heater on car radio – this was the real thing, live on stage.

**Ninety minutes in, the crowd roared when the once-golden-maned guitarist sang, “Do you feel like I do?”**

Clearly, they did. Then the icon – whose first single climbed the UK charts in 1969 – committed a rookie mistake: He announced he was going to play something new.

There are rules for writing set lists, the biggest being: “Save some hits.” Finish on a crescendo, take a quick break, rebuild. Ratchet tension until you and the audience can both climax in a burst of light, energy, and sound – simultaneously, in four-four time.

Save some hits.

Which Pete announced he had not done.

He made it clear at the outset that he was reprising his 1976 blockbuster Frampton Comes Alive! which meant front-loading chart-toppers. And now here he is, introducing a song off his “new CD, which I know you didn’t buy.” Either that was British self-deprecation or a ballsy punk-rock move.

Frampton Comes Alive! - Peter Frampton — Frampton Comes Alive! – Peter Frampton

Philadelphia wasn’t buying it. Usually, when a band breaks into a new song, folks take the opportunity for a beer exchange. This wasn’t a handful of people ducking out to piss. This was couples, double-dates, entire rows standing, putting on puffy coats, grabbing bags, and schlepping back across the bridge to Jersey to surprise babysitters and fire up CPAPs. Within a few minutes, easily two-thirds of the crowd had left.

I was gobsmacked – not that people only wanted to hear hits but at the magnitude of the exodus. I felt terrible for the band and got genuinely angry. For his part, Frampton seemed to take it in stride.

During the shared choruses, he hadn’t displayed the manufactured hubris of a casino-headlining reunion band but an almost-humble “Would you believe this shit?” joyfulness. A man who went from working steadily, if anonymously, to being everywhere all at once: Your AM radio, your dad’s car radio, music magazines, teen magazines. In three years he’d gone from opening for the Kinks in a half-house basketball arena to turning the football stadium across its parking lot into Pennsylvania’s third-largest municipality (with Skynyrd and J. Geils in support). And back to three-thousand seat theaters across the river two years later.

Rock shows repackage and reaffirm the familiar, providing comfort in singalongs – although hearing new stuff can be even more entertaining, engaging mind and soul differently. Nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake is less a celebration and reverie, and more unhealthy attachment to personal history. Commemorating is one thing, refusing to move on, another.

I want to say this whole mindset began with TV’s Happy Days, but that’s just my generation’s first taste of nostalgia. Back then, neighbors’ moms swooned to Sinatra’s Capitol records, their grandparents singing in italiano along with Mario Lanza 78s. Hamlet was nostalgic for his days of Yorick; hell, even Lot looked back.

In Philly, people worked where their parents worked, where their nephews and nieces planned to work. Looking backward was safer, because at least they know how that turned out. It can’t disappoint anymore.

There will always be tension between the past and present; we can question providence, accept it, or just ignore it.

With so much out of our personal control, with each day seeming more bleak – we can say things are “never better”, perhaps because they’re always worse – ignorance may truly be bliss.

“Nostalgia” sands the edges off experience and exalts in memories uncovered. A defense mechanism in the face of a terrifying future. There’s no need to be afraid of the past; there may be plenty of regrets, but nothing to fear.

We all reach a point where we have more yesterdays than tomorrows. As comforting as it is to embrace those yesterdays, we can’t change anything about them.

To watch Peter Frampton now, in 2024, is to watch a master burnish his legacy. Don’t be fooled by the cane, by the frail approach to a cushioned chair center stage. The artistry isn’t in the artifice; he isn’t a Madonna pretending to dance or a lip-synching Paul Stanley. Late-career Peter Frampton is Exhibit A that music comes from the soul.

Afflicted with inclusion-body myositis, he can’t bear the weight of his storied guitar, or even bend notes with force. But what he still wrenches out of that instrument – as fierce and melodic and gut-punching as what you first heard on 8-track. This isn’t a past-his-prime quarterback tossing ducks and flinching before a hit; this is a master class in spitting fire and redefining a career of hits.

I didn’t stay at that Philadelphia show out of any moral superiority.

I just wanted to enjoy a night of music, after which I stood at the exit, trying to time my dash through the freezing rain to the train platform.

I hit the crash bar, discovering too late that my way was mostly blocked by an idling bus. Not public transit, but a sleek motor coach. Huddled by the doors, with a desperate look somewhere between hopeful and frostbitten, was a guy clutching his copy of Comes Alive! and another holding, of all things, a tambourine.

Also approaching was local DJ Pierre Robert. If he’s going to stand out here, blowing into his fists for warmth, there must be something happening. I stopped to say “hey” – I’d bumped into him at several shows over the years.

A roadie ambled over from backstage, disregarding the weather in sweatshirt and shorts. His legs looked like Renaissance-fair turkey legs.

The fan protecting his LP under his coat asked, “Is Peter coming out to sign autographs?”

The roadie laughed. “F*** no. You’re crazy if you think he’d come out in this!”

The poor guy with the record shrugged and started to walk away. The roadie moved the barricade, just enough to slide through. But he didn’t, he turned back toward the stage door.

After a few steps, he spun back to us and said, “Well? You coming or not?”

We shot each other a look – a combination of “Who, me?” and “Did he mean what I think he meant?” We shimmied past the barricade and followed his flashlight across the pavement. “Watch out, it’s icy.”

He showed us the way past the brick loading dock and into what could have been the back hallway of any hotel, restaurant, or factory.

About ten seconds later, Peter Frampton appeared. Alone – no security or handlers.

He was a lot smaller than I would have guessed. Just a guy in a leather jacket, not looking forward to braving the cold.

Of course, that was the moment my wife texted: “Where are you?” I replied, honestly, “Standing on the loading dock with Pete.”

“Who?”

Frampton chatted with us, drinking his tea and signing the record and tambourine, discussing tunings and pickups and what years Gretsch made crap guitars.

I said, “You made a crack earlier about folks not buying your new CD.” He nodded and rolled his eyes. What are you gonna do. I held my hands in front of me, a few inches apart, like I was holding a jewel case. “I didn’t buy it either.”

Then I spread my hands about a foot apart. “But I did buy it on record.”

His eyes lit up and he smiled. “I didn’t even know we released it on vinyl!” He excitedly shouted this news down the hall. For a brief second, I was the star.

There’s a wonderful bit in Paperback Writer, a fictionalized biography of the Beatles, where Frampton is tapped to open for the Fab Four’s reunion concerts. In a dark twist, their new music is poorly received, the world moved on, and by tour’s end, Frampton is headlining. Published just weeks before John Lennon’s murder, Mark Shipper’s novel revels in nostalgia for the heady days of Beatlemania, even as it pierces the futility of clinging to the past, of refusing to accept the consequences of time’s eternal march.

Back in the real world, Peter Frampton’s debut album was titled Wind of Change, and even if he will never reprise the sensation he once was, he keeps challenging himself. He won his first Grammy thirty years after his Comes Alive! glory days. And now he’s invited to sit with the giants, in the Hall of Fame, where he belongs.

Being lured by nostalgia’s siren song is easy, both a response to and a preventer of change. I couldn’t articulate it that night, watching the stream of people leaving after dancing to their favorites. But standing backstage, discussing the future, I learned to appreciate the past without dwelling in it.

Peter Frampton’s ongoing journey, his now-Hall of Fame career, reminds us that though there are limited days ahead, each brings the potential for reinvention.

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Seattle-based screenwriter Robert J. Binney has written about Joe Strummer, James Bond, joyriding with the Salt Lake City police, and his relationship with President Jimmy Carter (though not all at once) for the Los Angeles Times and other fine publications. Most recently his fiction was published in Down & Out Books’ anthology The Killing Rain.

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:: connect with Peter Frampton here ::

“Baby, I Love Your Way” (live) – Peter Frampton

— — — —

Connect to Peter Frampton on
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

Discover new music on Atwood Magazine

 © Austin Lord

:: Stream Peter Frampton ::

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Category: Features

Interview: Pomme Takes Time to Watch the Seasons Bloom in Modern Opera, ‘Saisons’

Pomme’s ambitious new album ‘Saisons’ tells the story of nature’s cycles as an orchestral modern opera of her own unique creation.

Stream: ‘Saisons’ – Pomme

**If there is one thing that Pomme’s new album, Saisons, proves for sure, it is that she does not plan on growing complacent in her musical career.**

dans tes rêves sous la neige
percent les couleurs
c’est la trêve de l’hiver
et le temps des fleurs
dis mois
où se cachait le soleil
tout ce temps là

Translation:
In your dreams under the snow
The colors come piercing through
Here comes the winter break
And the time for flowers to grow
Tell me
Where was the sun hiding all this time?

“_mar le temps des fleurs,” – Pomme

**Pomme references Disney’s Fantasia (1940) as a dreamscape to which her mind traveled often while writing the opera.**

:: stream/purchase Saisons here ::

:: connect with Pomme here ::