By As I spoke to Montreal’s art-punk quintet La Sécurité, I quickly learned they are not musicians who slow down. The band’s Éliane Viens-Synnott revealed they have over 50 gigs planned and booked until September—if that doesn’t make for a busy summer, I don’t know what does. It is in line with their energetic music. Viens-Synnott, who is joined by Melissa Di Menna, Félix Bélisle, Kenny Smith, and Laurence Anne Charest-Gagné, form an incredibly tight post-punk rhythm section evoking the quirky, agile grooves of Devo, the B-52s, and Suburban Lawns. Their hodgepodge of a musical education—everyone’s had stints in other Montreal bands—makes for really oscillating, calculatedly chaotic, and stellar art rock.
They undeniably made an impression with their 2023 debut album, STAY SAFE!, and have kept up the pace on its follow-up, BINGO!, which may be even more exuberant. The gap between records wasn’t a chance to breathe at all—in my chat with Viens-Synnott and Di Menna, they mentioned that they continued writing while on tour. They probably still are, but they are importantly ready and eager to blast their new songs live. With aerobic rock as bouncy as this, BINGO! is a raucous onslaught bound to blow more audiences away. We also dove deeper into La Sécurité’s songwriting process and their distinctiveness in embracing their bilingual roots.
It’s been a few years since your debut album, STAY SAFE!—what happened during the period between that record and this new one? What made you all return to the studio to continue writing?
Éliane Viens-Synnott: It never really stopped, from my perspective. Songs and lyrics were written on the road. I always had a little book with me. We had to make a record—well, we had a record deal—so there was a timeline. It’s always “cause and effect” with us. It’s like, we’ll have two new songs, one gets played on the CBC, and then we’re asked to play shows, but we only have two songs. So, the rest is history.
It does seem you’ve been on the road a lot, going to all sorts of places in the US and Europe.
Melissa Di Menna: It’s not just an impression.
EV-S: It’s a fact.
Traveling to those different places must compel you to write on the road even more. Like maybe you’re playing your music in places you never expected to.
MDM: We played those songs [from STAY SAFE!] so much that we’re really excited to have new material to be showcasing and working on. Maybe that was the catalyst for writing new songs, and these songs also evolved. When we were touring, the tempos changed, we made little adjustments here and there—they became a little different. When I listen to the actual recordings, I’m like, “Oh! We tweaked that a little bit.” But that’s what touring does too.
EV-S: I’ll hear the songs somewhere, and it’s so slow! *laughs* And I’m not exaggerating, I think we have over 50 shows planned and booked right now, like until September.
Oh wow. Yeah, keeping busy. *laughs*
MDM: It’s gonna be a busy summer.
But it’ll be fun.
EV-S: It’s our job. We’re there to rock. I guess we’re doing our teenage dreams as jobs right now.
It’s funny you mentioned the songs feel slower, because I’d revisited your first album, and I think the main difference is that BINGO! is quicker and more urgent. Did you consciously aim for that?
MDM: It just happened like that. The [title] song came out of a jam. Just all of us at the studio rehearsal space, trying to put our minds together. Félix started playing bass with Kenny on drums, and everybody jumped in there. On the recording, it’s a little slower—we actually play it much faster live—not that we intend to, but I think we get excited.
EV-S: “We”? I think someone gets excited, and then we don’t have a choice.
MDM: It starts normally, and then it speeds up.
The interplay between the five of you as a band must also lend to that. You want to match each other’s energy, and I’m sure that’s been fine-tuned the more you’ve been on the road and writing together.
EV-S: For sure. I’ve been joking about this lately, but I think we spend more time together than we do with our families. So, it’s kind of inevitable.
MDM: I think we know each other more when we’re playing. We can give each other looks, and we kind of know what’s up. There’s like a non-verbal communication going on.
How much of that dynamic has been strengthened since your first album?
MDM: Well, it’s evolved immensely. I don’t know how to quantize that.
EV-S: It’s evolved, it’s dissipated, it’s got bigger … How long has it been [since we first worked together]? It’s been five years.
MDM: Yeah? No.
EV-S: Yeah, dude, 2021. Summer.
MDM: Time flies.
EV-S: Yeah, right. And you know, just like life … That’s as personal as I’m going to get.
Of course, no worries. On the songwriting, you mentioned writing while touring. How is that usually done? Is it jams, or does everyone write their own parts to share with everyone else?
EV-S: Each song is its own adventure, I’d say. Both of the methods you’ve mentioned have been used. As far as lyrics go, usually I have a bunch of little ideas on hand, for the most part. There are a few exceptions when Félix or Melissa have brought little texts. Félix will also spend time alone, either for a solo project or for fun, making little things on Ableton—mostly drum ‘n’ bass with some melody. I think “Detour” was one of those. What’s the other one, Mel?
MDM: “Deny.” Also, “Power Snoozer” with the bass riff.
EV-S: Félix apparently wrote that riff when he was 16. He’s in this other band, Choses Sauvages; he would always bring it up.
I read that the lyrics were improvised and spontaneous, but they all seem similarly existential and therefore come together coherently.
EV-S: I have a dance background. I studied dance at university, specifically choreography, and I think something pretty common in contemporary dance in Montreal is spontaneous creation and finding the essence in it. I think it just stayed in my creative process, and since I write a lot, it’s almost like a jam. I’ll adlib some rhythm on top of the music while we’re jamming, record it on my iPhone, and listen to it while I’m walking to figure out how to phrase it.
Félix worked on the production with Emmanuel Éthier, while Renny Wilson engineered the new record. To me, BINGO! is a bit cleaner and sharper. How did this partnership bring out its different sound?
MDM: Well, not working with the same people in the same studio makes a big difference in general, but Félix had a clear idea of where he wanted to take the sound of the record from the beginning, when we were first writing songs. So, we let him take the lead on that. Personally, I don’t think that’s necessarily my forte. I really like composing songs, and he wanted to produce. He got help from Renny and Emmanuel to get the sound that he was going for. He comes from a different musical background than Éliane and me, but he was more inclined to the indie sleaze-era sound. I think that’s where he wanted to take it.
EV-S: He also wanted to pull it back a little bit and craft it up.
MDM: The first record was more of Sam Gemme’s vision of what we were going to do, and on this one, Félix wanted to take the lead, Emmanuel jumped in, and that’s the sound we have.
EV-S: Compared to STAY SAFE!, where the band was maybe about six months to a year old when we made that record, we started touring a bunch after and figuring out how to play together. It was a guideline for our sound. Also, Renny is an old friend of mine. The first time I ever played live music was in one of his bands, drumming for him. We went across Canada to Vancouver and back to Montreal, sleeping on people’s couches and taping songs on a four-track. It just really influenced me. This was like my early 20s, before I went to dance school.
I feel like it was special for me to have that link. While we were in the recording process, he understood certain things I wanted without me having to explain them too much because of our history. He was my first roommate back in Edmonton, so we’re like old buds. But he’s really hard to work with, so I was also really curious to see how that was gonna pan out … And I think it worked out.
It seems like it has. I can confidently say, as a listener from the other side of the world, the music sounds great. At the end of the day, some of you already knew each other or met through music, so to do the thing you love most together as friends must be a nice thing.
MDM: Yep, definitely.
EV-S: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a very nice thing.
Something else that stands out with what you do is the code-switching—the bilingual aspect. It’s interesting because where I am in Australia, there are similar punk bands, but they’re often exclusively English-speaking. Openly embracing your French Canadian identity definitely makes your music unique.
EV-S: I guess you can understand, being from a fellow Commonwealth country, the hodgepodge of cultures that occur post-colonization. I went to an English-speaking high school in Alberta, but my parents are both from Quebec, so I speak French at home. I spent my summers there and have been living there for 16 years. Mel’s a Montrealer with Italian and English roots.
MDM: I grew up bilingual, but using French and English is a very Montreal thing. It reflects the way that we actually live. When we’re jamming, we’re always skipping from French to English and English to French. It’s just how we roll, so I guess it reflects in our songs. For Éliane, who mostly writes the lyrics, they come out that way, and it makes them special. I mean, there’s gotta be other bands doing this.
EV-S: And maybe not necessarily just French and English specifically, but it’s between two places. If you think of places like Spain, places where they have that Catalan culture, it’s sort of the same, but a different kind of reality for Quebec. Quebec is the first Canadian culture in a way, because it’s really its own little strange, weird mutation of explorers from 400 years ago.
I also agree that other people are doing that code-switching. It’s just another thing that makes your tight melodies stand out—you get to celebrate your culture in your music.
EV-S: It’s true that often in Quebec, people will tend to a camp, though, either just singing in English as Quebecers, or just singing in French, and there’s a microcosm for that scene here with the export or touring potential in France and Belgium. There was a little bit of talk at first because it seemed safer in a way, maybe singing just in French, especially because Félix and the others are established in the French music scene. I’m really glad we decided not to do that, and just kind of go … “Who cares?”
MDM: Let’s not pick sides. Let’s get hybrid.
EV-S: That set the tone for everything that came after. Let’s do what feels right.
BINGO! is out now on Bandcamp. Follow La Sécurité on Instagram. Cover photo by Kristin Sollecito.
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