Laetitia SadierDavid Thayer
One year ago, occupy became a collective noun, 1 per cent became a notorious quantity, and protest tent cities became a headline fact of North American life. The Occupy movement's return engagement this week has been much smaller, but this time it has a soundtrack, courtesy of Laetitia Sadier.
Silencio, the recent solo album from the former Stereolab singer, is full of critiques of the 1 per cent and the compliant political culture that she says keeps them on top. The disc came out in July to generally good reviews and much comment about the apparent contrast between the hard-hitting rhetoric of Sadier's lyrics and the danceable nature of her music.
Any tool can be a weapon if you hold it right, as Ani DiFranco says, and Sadier's weapons are arriving on North American stages just as Occupy returns to the headlines. Her first show coincided with the beginning of the movement's three-day New York anniversary; the second of her two Canadian dates happens Wednesday at Pop Montreal.
"We got sold out, banks got bailed out," protesters chanted near Wall Street on Monday, at around the time Sadier was elaborating a similar idea to me over phone. The Greek government gets in trouble, she said, and the people suffer harsh austerity measures; but when big banks get in trouble, governments bail them out.
"It's quite an exciting time, because finally we have reached a point where it's more and more visible that this system is abusive," she said. "It works very well for a minority. They have power because we let them. They put a big smokescreen around what they're doing, and we let them rule us and do whatever they want with us. Democracy at large is under threat."
The banks have too much power over the political system, she says, and over rules designed to govern their conduct. "The financial system was deregulated, money became a virtual thing, and wealth was created by borrowing money. At the end, that does not add up, and then it's the people who have to pay."
She delivers this analysis in the same cool yet sensual voice you hear on her records, the kind of voice that never seems to go out of style in her native France, from the ye-ye singers of the sixties to recent electropop bands such as We Are Enfant Terrible. It's not a voice type that's much associated with dissent, which is one reason Sadier catches people's attention.
Another is that you don't feel like you're gulping down bran as she sings about the irresponsible rich and the bossy IMF. The Rule of the Game, a blunt indictment of the ruling class, offers a dreamy blend of strummed guitars and wordless vocals over a beat that evokes sunny leisure more than armed struggle. The final stretch is an uptempo instrumental that seems to prove that, like Emma Goldman, Sadier believes there's no worthwhile revolution without dancing.
The song's title came from the Jean Renoir film, which Sadier sees as "a very light film, yet underneath it's about what happens if we act like children, like irresponsible individuals who don't want to be aware of the danger of exerting power over other people." The problem these days, she said, is that people don't distinguish between selfishness and the personal autonomy necessary to be a responsible member of society. "The idea that I'm alone in the world, and other people don't matter, or they're only there to serve me or for me to exploit, that's completely absurd and dangerous," she said.
Monade, a previous Sadier solo project, was named in tribute to Cornelius Castoriadis, an influential Greek-born French intellectual who theorized on the nature of autonomy and the role of individual creativity in societies. "I called Monade 'mon projet d'autonomie,' " she said, referring both to Castoriadis and to her emergence from the shelter of Stereolab, which went on hiatus in 2009.
As for remedies, Sadier's short list sounds a lot like the gentle collectivism posed by earlier generations, going back to the utopian communities of the 19th century. Worker co-operatives, sharing their profits, deciding things democratically, encouraging creativity – it sounds like a beautiful world.
A beautiful sound may be Sadier's most subversive contribution to what that world might feel like. While you're dancing, she's singing about the slide to fascism, giving a pleasurable envelope to a serious message. There are worse ways to rouse the multitudes.
Laetitia Sadier plays the Ukrainian Federation Wednesday as part of Pop Montreal.