A Conversation with La Force on Fault Lines, Dance Music and The Other Side of Grief.

Written and interviewed by Eva Lynch

XO Skeleton has been my favourite album this year, it’s a sincere and genuine portrait of grief and what it means to continue to live beyond it, and enshroud yourself with care and love. La Force described the album as ‘death with a kiss and a hug’ and all the complexities those existential feelings bring, entangled with groovy rhythms and haunted vocals that make for a beautiful listening experience you can get lost in. I had the opportunity to chat with La Force, on her road home from a festival.

Eva: Hello, nice to meet you! Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. Where are you on your way to? La Force: We're on our way back to Montreal. We were at FEQ last night. Very exciting. How was this year's festival run? Um, good. We did the Jazz. The FEQ. And then we're going to play Le Festif! Very exciting. Um, then there's one, I think in the morning. I forget what it's called right now. I should remember. Oh, super folk maybe? And then, there’s one in Victoria. So not, not, not that busy. Nice. Rifflandia, Victoria! Okay, very exciting. 

I actually had the chance to see you at Jazz Fest a couple days ago. Oh, great. And it was a beautiful performance, it was very cool. I've been a huge fan of your work, but especially this album. This album has been so beautiful and to get to see it live is just so special. And I've actually gotten to see you three times this year, which has been really beautiful.  

I think I've only played three times. That's amazing.  

Yeah. I saw you at the Phi Foundation and then when you opened for Caroline Rose. Ohh, on the floor! On the floor! Where it was really just like we're in your living room. It felt like, you know, everyone was on the same level. I think that's our favorite way of playing. Is that very intentional? 

Yeah, totally. To the point that we did a run with Caroline, East and West. And once we figured there were a couple of stages where they couldn't accommodate our screen, we proposed playing on the floor and then we realized how much we liked it. And anytime we could, we would. To the point that they nicknamed us ‘La Floor-ce.’ But I like it, because it's such a, especially when it's just a duo with visuals, but when we're a duo, it's like, I just, I want it to feel both intimate and in your face. Intimately in your face. 

I feel like it does exactly that, because it also, I feel like, lets you get really into the emotions of it when you're on that same level. But that's interesting a couple places couldn't accommodate your screen, because I feel like something I'm really curious about is what the process is for you with your visuals, because you have such a strong visual aesthetic, and when you perform, it's such an embodied performance, and it's connected to so much, or at least that's what it feels like. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

I'm so curious about when you're writing your songs, do you approach them conceptually, like are you thinking about how you want to, for instance, shed your skin on stage, and what that image might look like? 

No, no, those things happen through a lot of thinking. So after, I think what happens is there's a through line or there's an aesthetic that exists that gets, pardon the pun, fleshed out with time, but I think that I also have recurrent themes in my work, which is definitely about the body and about death and about life, and what it is to live through a body. So those themes come back and then, I guess I am like a magpie looking for things around me that inspire or reflect that feeling. So I collect imagery for a really long time that speaks to me

So when you’re collecting this imagery that plays into these themes, are they inspiring the songs or is it mainly what’s speaking to you in the moment to be saved for later?

Well my band name is inspired by an image, so somewhere that happens, but not generally, no.

What is the imagery for La Force, is it the tarot card? 

Yeah, it’s the woman opening the Lion’s mouth. 

Is tarot something that is a big part of your life?

Tarot is actually not a big part of my life. I enjoy it, but I’m not a practitioner. But I like the drawings and the Tableau de Marseille, and the La Force card particularly appealed to me because I liked the intention behind it. I see it as a tension between reason and instinct and I feel like that’s what the artist is doing. The artist is sort of summoning, all that is instinct, or animal, or immediate, and applies this kind of rational, curatorial composition, but it's that interplay and that tension between the two, that’s where the art comes out.

That’s beautiful, I feel like that feeling specifically is at the forefront of your music, there is so much balance in the way you approach things, or at least I think you feel as an audience. And speaking of these themes that are really prevalent in your music, and throughout this album, I mean XO Skeleton is a masterpiece but it’s so much about love yet equally about loss and grief; and if it's okay to ask you what is the role of grief in your process, and how has it been to revisit those emotions?

By the time I was making this record, I wasn’t in an acute state of grief. I was when I was making my first record; a lot of my first record was written sort of knowing that death was coming, so this is a while later and I think it’s more like, when you’re on the other side of that very chasm-y grief, and it really influenced my existential feelings. I’ve always been a bit… I mean obviously people fear death, that makes a lot of sense to me, but I was kind of obsessive about death. Not just fearing it, but it was more that, I can’t -- I had such a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that we die, or that we are born and live, and die. And I feel like we live this life that is structured by this abyss on both sides and I think when you have no religion or spirituality, as is my case, it is a really daunting thought, and it can become almost obsessive, and it was for me. And after experiencing grief, my feelings about it changed a little bit, like it doesn’t gnaw at me anymore. I think maybe because someone that was beloved to me is in that other place, and somehow it opened up the possibility that rather than being this like deafening roar of nothingness, that maybe something opened up the possibility that it could be anything. And that I truly truly don’t know, and in truly not knowing, maybe it's also not bad. It’s beyond good and bad, or at least a little less scary. 

I feel like grief can be so raw in the beginning but then it begins to find its place in your life and can be softer as it grows with you, but it’s definitely a journey to go on. 

Yeah. And I guess now the question is more about taking stock of a life, it’s really more that.

I know people say the big question that comes with grief, is where do you put your love then, and hearing your music, you see that’s where the love has gone, and it is so evident in “How Do You Love a Man,” that [feeling] is so present. 

It’s funny writing a torch song to a dead father. It is also because he and I had a lot of metaphysical chats as he was dying, and I was like “Maybe I’ll see you,” and he was like “Oh sweetheart, if you think so, but I’m really going to just go become compost.” And so it’s almost like, how do I attempt at loving him, after he’s not corporeal and also defy my family belief system. In my family belief system, there is absolutely no continuation of the soul. So I’m breaking with that tradition and allowing myself to think, ‘maybe I will connect with you on some level.’ 

Yeah, totally. The hope and the mystery of it, because you don’t know, and there’s comfort in that. As you continue on this journey, you were very in the midst of [grieving] throughout your first album, you were processing it more by your second, and at a couple of your live shows, you’ve mentioned a next project. 

Yeah. That’s starting. 

Very exciting! Is [this grief] something you think you might continue to explore or that will stay with you, or are there other things you’re excited to explore with your next project?

Yeah, I think a theme that’s coming up now for me is fallibility. Which is again about a kind of failing and renewal, but maybe less about the fallibility, because I don’t know that death is a failure and I want to be careful. It’s not so much about death, but more a response to the immediate. So I’m interested in themes of like, building cities over fault lines, or our capacity to willingly sublimate and build on top of what we know is broken. So that can be entering into a friendship where you can feel this really intense bit of ‘fucked-up-ness’ that you just build on top of, but eventually that crack will reveal itself. So like, the whole west coast is cities built on a massive faultline and it’s just a fertile image for me both politically, architecturally, economically, psycho-emotionally, it’s just the image that keeps coming back to me. And also really using my own, deeply entrenched faultlines to discuss these things as a wider concept. 

That sounds beautiful, I think that’s such a powerful image to keep coming back to. 

Yeah, I usually like a broad topic. [Laughs] You know, life, death, grief, faults, 

Collapse.

Yeah. I was just listening to a podcast, I think his name is Uncle Gene, he lives in England, he’s Jamaican -- I have to check it out, but he’s a part of this group called Equinox, it’s so good, but he made this whole record about being in the studio-- his experience of being in studios --and the recording process. And I find that so refreshing and cool and I can’t wait to listen to it. I was also marveling at how, I don’t know, I was a little bit jealous that he could take something that felt sort of so day-to-day and terrestrial, and there wasn’t this need to be grand and metaphysical. So, I’m gonna see if I can be a little bit less dramatic [laughs].

I have to say, in your defense on that, you are able to make a world that is so everyday feel so mystical and ethereal, even your telephone calls, the way you integrate them and those conversations, it feels like you make something so familiar otherworldly, and I think that is a really cool familiar yet estranged way of approaching life, and a really beautiful thing to share. 

Thank you! 

But speaking of recording studios, what’s it like for you having recorded this past album in your home -- which has had so many life events in it. Is this somewhere you still feel really fruitful making music or are you curious about moving into different spaces and seeing what that’s like 

Huh, yeah. Well part of it is just that it’s economically smarter for me to work at home. I’m in the car with Liam [O’Neil], who I play with, and I was talking about how I want to learn how to do more of it, but I’m daunted by it but I want to try anyway. But I think if I had a proper budget, I would probably go find a house in the country and work there. I wouldn’t work at home, but I’m lucky to be able to. Someday, I’ll do it another day. 

I’m curious about how the lines between when you’re making music and when you’re living the rest of your life blur?

[Laughs] Unfortunately the rest of my life comes in too much, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. I think that’s what it is. When you leave your home you leave so much. Duty, my muse has always been put on a shelf and told to wait and she doesn't like it. When I show up again, she’s like ‘Oh but I’m not available to you, because you’re not paying enough attention to me.’ 

That’s tricky [laughs]. Speaking about your home, at a few of your live shows you’ve debuted your song “Protection” and how it’s really about a desire to protect your daughter, and that’s where the song was born. But you’ve also talked about how XO Skeleton the song and the album are also about the idea of protection and that external XO layer, and I was wondering if those ideas of protection are one in the same or if they’re coming from different places or growing into one another?

I wrote those songs close to one another so I must have really been…Protection just didn’t make the record, for no particularly good reason, maybe I didn’t love the recording and we wanted to wrap it up. I think they come from a similar place, one was really about my daughter. 

It seems like you’re part of a tight-knit, collaborative community and you have so many collaborators, I mean with Montreal artists alone you have so many projects, from Patrick Watson to Warren Spicer, I’m curious if there is someone you’d like to work with in the future or whose sound is inspiring you right now?

There’s nothing that jumps to mind, but I think that there are people. I just can’t say off the top of my head. Because you know, I’ve worked with a couple of people that I really wanted to work with, and I found it kind of disappointing. It’s a little like not meeting your heroes. I think sometimes, you end up collaborating best with the people you naturally connect with. So I’m wary of putting anyone on a pedestal. 

That’s smart. 

And I realize that often if I were to say who I want to collaborate with, like I love their music, but it’s not even so much that I want to be making it with them. 

Totally. You can appreciate it from afar, and as a listener. 

Yeah, I don't know if I’d like it so much if I was involved. 

So when you are a part of these collaborations, with people you’re sort of naturally drawn to in life, is that a space you feel more supported and ready to experiment in or if you feel that way when you’re working on a solo project, as La Force.

I feel free-est alone I guess. I’m starting to write by myself, but like I feel quite free with Liam sitting next to me, but we’ve known each other a long time, and have spent a long time playing now, we’ve done a lot of shows and we are forthright to one another. We’re very direct and we care about each other which is a good foundation. 

That’s really great, is that something that came with time or were you always very forthright with each other? 

No, I think that I have a little bit of a rep for being forthright, but I’ve asked people sometimes if that's a ‘gender thing’ and how at one point someone was like, “Wow, you’re so direct about what you think,” and I was like, “Can you just imagine I’m a man and that I just said what I said, and do you think you’d still think that?” So it’s some of that. But Warren and Liam and I are going to work together, and I can’t work with people with whom I can’t be direct. And the problem is when you don’t know someone very well and you don’t feel very comfortable you one default into a ‘wanting-to-please-mode’ and I don’t think that’s a good ethic. 

That makes sense. I think for it to be the most authentic, you have to feel that comfort. And be able to fully lean into it. 

Yeah and not be too afraid of disagreement or discord, because really you’re trying to serve a song. 

Going back to your next record, as well as being about fallibility, from your shows I’ve also heard that you are looking to make a dance record?

Yeah, it’s in there!

Very exciting. 

I’ll put ‘dance record’ in quotes [laughs]. Uptempo. Driving. I was working with someone a while ago who I told I wanted to make a dance record, and he looked at me and was like, ‘everyone wants to make a dance record,’ and I was like, ‘okay!’ 

Everyone wants to make a dance record [laughs].

Everyone wants to make a dance record. And yet, I might! I’m thinking it’ll be part ‘dance record’ and part lo-fi, very intimate, folk, kind of acoustic, piano acoustic. 

That sounds like a great mix

Yeah! Like walking between two rooms and two states of being. 

That’s very cool. Especially because I find your current work very groovy and rhythmic, even when it’s more low-tempo or laid back. There’s still very much that rhythm in here that has you wanting to dance and really connect to, I think because your work is based in the body you feel it, it’s like body-listening to the music as well. 

Oh wow, you couldn’t have said it better. I really appreciate that you picked that up. That’s kind of my north star. You’ve really cheered me up.

It’s such an honour to chat with you about the album and where you’re going. I really love XO Skeleton, and your work, and I think it’s just so beautiful and I wanted to say thank you so much.