I speak French everyday in my hometown, Montreal—imperfectly and with a heavy accent. But it still feels natural for me to write and sing in French. I love French songs. I’m not a connoisseur, but I listen to the old time French singers, especially Edith Piaf, but also Brassens, Brel, Aznavour, Montand and Trenet. Serge Gainsbourg has probably made the biggest impression. A lot of Anglophones listen to Melodie Nelson, but his best songs are elsewhere, and you really have to know the language to appreciate his genius. Felix Leclerc is a Quebecois songwriter that I like. Nowadays I like Vincent Delerm. His self-titled first record is really good.
With J’habite un pays I wanted to undo the patriotic song. I mean that tradition of song that some of us were brought up with that celebrates brotherhood and love of country. I copped some of the form and lexicon of that type of song to say something else. The country that I’m singing about in the refrain isn’t a place; it’s the interior landscape of a very lonely person. So the song is about solitude rather than solidarity.
Anglophone Quebeckers aren’t particularly patriotic. We don’t feel Canadian in our bones like someone from Ontario might, but we don’t feel Quebecois either, at least not like some of my Francophone friends who see the fleur-de-lis in trees and rivers and the sky over their heads. Then there’s Israel. For years I went to Jewish school, where I was taught that Israel, a country I’d never been to, is my homeland. I eventually visited Israel. I liked it, but I felt very far from home over there.