After ten years of discographic silence, the singer of Montpellier origin Emilie Simon has not stopped for a year: after an elegant rereading of her first album and a daring multimedia project, she has finally released a new album “Polaris” which has he interstellar epic of her double Lilly Mercier in search of herself. A dazzling retro-futuristic adventure that confirms its big return!
Last year, you released “ES”, a reinterpretation of your first album. In retrospect, we understand that it came to mark the end of a chapter because another has since opened with “Phoenix” and “Polaris”…
I started by releasing “ES” in the spring of 2023 because 2023 happened to mark the twentieth anniversary of my first album. Then, yes, I did quite a bit! “Phoenix” which was released in the fall of 2023 was a somewhat atypical project: at the same time a musical tale, a mini-album and a short film.
It is in this project that we discover the character of Lily Mercier who returns in your new real album “Polaris”. Who is she?
Actually, the character appeared quite a while ago, when I started working on my new album, around 2015. But finally he made his public premiere first in “Phoenix”. Lily Mercier is a vampiric character, both alive and dead, capable of wandering in several dimensions, of reaching the stars… She allows me to tell lots of stories, to follow initiatory paths…
Is this your “Ziggy Stardust”?
Maybe… In any case, it’s a character who has something of me, while being different from me. Obviously, since it’s me who imagines it, some of its aspects are born from me.
Before going any further, we are obliged to dwell on this consistency with you since your beginnings: you like concepts, even “high concepts”, that is to say the original ideas which hold an entire artistic building…
In fact, I love giving meaning to what I do. Writing songs simply to accumulate songs doesn’t satisfy me, I need it to go a little further, to tell something, without necessarily being narrative (even if “Polaris” like “Phoenix” are) . My first record was already a concept album in its own way and for “Végétal”, I had written a whole story with the plan of making it into an animated film but it didn’t happen, it was too complicated . “Big machine” revolved around the idea of New York City. Since my beginnings, in fact, my projects have always had a theme, a guideline; which allows me to explore a period of my life, a facet, a place or a different energy.
Let’s come to “Polaris”. What does this album say?
So it’s still a concept album (laughs). “Phoenix” began with the death of Lily Mercier and ended with her return to life. We find her in “Polaris”, as a human who has to battle with her inner demons because being human is ultimately perhaps more complicated than being a vampire. As she can no longer stand her demons, she prays for deliverance and for someone to come and get her. Her wish is granted: one evening a giant winged tiger appears who will take her to the planet Polaris, the north star, because Lily has lost her way, in fact. The tiger will accompany her on her journey until she wants to return to Earth.
Going through this type of half-fantasy, half-science fiction story, is it a way of talking about reality or escaping it?
A bit of both, no doubt. We portray in abyss, we reformulate what we experience and feel, we use symbols… It’s like tales, which can be more telling than realistic stories. Sometimes when reality seems confusing, when the sequence of events is beyond our control, we need a bird’s eye view. By going through the imagination, we sometimes see better the lines of force, the perspectives. We can achieve something universal, which speaks to everyone.
As with you the form and the content are inseparable, we are obliged to note from the outset that your voice is on this record, freer than ever!
It’s the project that guides me. It is still a question here of someone who travels in the cosmos, towards a star. We are in something quite epic, a quest for the absolute, for transcendence. This is reflected in the melodies. And my singing, the same, it adapts to the subject. It’s simply interpretation. (laughs)
Musically, if it remains sophisticated, it seems more frontal, simpler than before…
It’s possible. Anyway, it’s a goal that I’ve been pursuing since the start of my career: simplify, simplify, simplify! Try to use as few sounds as possible to say as much as possible. But it’s a journey because I’m more of a maximalist by nature! So I do my best to go to the essential, towards simplicity. This is also what this project specifically requires: traveling in space requires an efficient, streamlined design…
The instrumentation is luminous, the arrangements both futuristic and vintage.
It was the state of mind. The idea was to recall my childhood, with all these synths, these particular arrangements. The future as we saw it in the 80s, let’s say. But I didn’t want it to be completely vintage. Rather retro-futuristic. The sounds, the instruments that I use can recall eras or aesthetics but it is never literally. For me, it’s not creative to reproduce, to pastiche, I need to create my own way.
It’s probably a bit silly to ask you this when you’re starting a new tour, but do you have any other projects planned?
Yes, I have lots of possibilities but I don’t have plans to release a new album in three months, no! (laughs) I’ll take care of the tour for the time being. I have some things but I don’t know in what form, and when it will be ready to release or tour.
It must be nice to feel so creative after a few years of silence?
It’s true that there were all these years that were necessary to prepare all of this. It’s always a bit of a mystery how it happens. There are periods when we are more in underground work, where we will store experiences, desires, ideas, without taking the action of writing or in any case recording and finalizing projects. And there are other phases where we are really productive, where things take shape and come to life. There, I completed three projects in one year, it’s a bit crazy!
