InterviewGhostly Kisses: Where Is Our Own Home
Ghostly Kisses came off two years on the road, shut themselves in a house in Quebec, and wrote an album about distance. Margaux Sauvé and Louis-Étienne Santais spoke to Ninyaz about Across the Pond, the box of secrets, and two sold-out Saudi shows.
Watch the videoThe making of Across the Pond starts with an ending. Two years of touring Darkroom finished, and the Canadian duo went home and found that what they needed next was to get considerably smaller.
“We felt like we needed to get back into our bubble and get back to a more personal and intimate place creatively,” Margaux Sauvé told Ninyaz on Da3s O’ Clock. “And kind of connect again with what it means for us to be artists, and the roots of what is Ghostly Kisses.”
What followed was not a studio booking. It was a house.
“We kind of just locked ourselves in our house to the end of winter and the spring in Canada, and in our studio. And we started writing songs just about how we were feeling in that moment. We did a lot of writing together on this album, like in the same room, in our living room, just casually going, writing and singing.”
You can hear that room in it. Across the Pond, out since August, runs ten tracks and barely half an hour, and it is softer than the record before it by design.
Two favorites, both provisional
Asked to name a favorite track, Louis-Étienne Santais did what any sane artist does and hedged.
“That’s like picking your favorite child. It varies from month to month, week to week, and even day to day.”
Today’s answer was “White Doves,” the closing track, the one carrying the strings. Its origin is considerably less grand than its arrangement.
“Funnily enough, one that we wrote while doing the dishes at first, almost as a joke. Singing melodies, made-up words. And then I was like, oh, actually, there might be something there. Let me go on piano and find the harmonies with that.”
It stayed a joke for a while. Then the string arrangement got written and recorded, and, in his words, “it was like, oh, okay, this is a song.”
Sauvé picked “Fade from Me,” and her reason had nothing to do with the arrangement.
“I’m just really proud of the writing of this song and it feels really true. Sometimes there are songs that I can’t hear for years, or sometimes I don’t hear the meaning of it until really late. The relationship with our own tracks varies, but this one just feels right for me.”
The box of secrets
Ninyaz asked whether Saudi had ever produced a song outright, whether four visits to the Kingdom had ever turned into a track written for the people here. The answer was more interesting than a yes.
A few years ago the duo put a mailbox on their website and called it the box of secrets. Fans wrote in.
“A lot of fans from Saudi wrote to us about what they were going through, anything they wanted to share with us. That has impacted our writing and the themes that we’re talking about. So I can’t say that we’ve written to Saudi fans, but they are part of our thoughts and feelings, so they are part of the song, part of the musical journey.”
Santais went further. That correspondence was the foundation of the last record.
“That was the basis of why the album was written in the first place. This is almost a tribute album to our fans, in some kind of way.”
The pond, and the other thing the title means
Across the Pond is, on its face, a geography joke. They live in Canada and tour mostly Europe and the Gulf.
Underneath it, Santais described something less comfortable, and it is not simply about missing home.
“When you go back home you don’t feel the same as when you left. Maybe you missed many things, you’re not in the same mental space as the people you’re going back to, but at the same time you’ve missed them. And when you’re home, like we just did in the past year, when you’re writing, you miss the connection with the fans, the shows and whatnot.”
Sauvé finished the thought.
“Wherever we are, we are in disconnection with certain people. That was the general feeling of Across the Pond. That kind of distance, and just not being in sync with some people. So it’s like, where is our own home? Where is the place that we feel the most anchored? It’s a question that is still going.”
“Whatever it is, it’s stronger in Saudi than anywhere else.”
Sold out, twice
Riyadh and Jeddah both sold out, and the speed of it caught them off guard.
“It’s very rare for an artist to have that kind of connection, and I feel like it’s personal, so it’s even more gratifying for us,” Sauvé said. “The reaction with the tickets and the announcement of the shows was very surprising for us. We didn’t think it was going to go as quick.”
It is their fourth time in the Kingdom, their second in Riyadh, and the tour carries on to Amman, Doha and Cairo. When Ninyaz asked why the music lands the way it does across the region, neither of them pretended to know.
“It’s hard to say why people feel connected to certain music,” Sauvé said. “I don’t have an answer for that.”
Santais had a partial one.
“But one thing is for sure. Whatever it is, it’s stronger in Saudi than anywhere else. So maybe we should ask our fans in Saudi to help us answer that.”
What they wanted to say
Ninyaz gave them the last word and asked what Ghostly Kisses would want to tell their listeners here.
“I just feel very grateful that we have that connection, even though we cannot speak to everyone one by one. We feel their support, and we see it,” Sauvé said. “I want this relationship to grow still. I think it’s just the beginning, honestly. It’s the beginning of a love story between us and our audience. So for me it would be: we see you, we love you.”
Santais added the practical half.
“And we’ll come more and more. As much as we can, basically.”
Across the Pond by Ghostly Kisses is out now and in rotation on MDLBEAST Radio. Tune in across the Kingdom on 104.8 Riyadh, 98.1 Jeddah, 97.4 Dammam and 87.6 Abha, or listen live at mdlbeastradio.com.
