“It’s no longer the album I thought I would release,” says Camille Poliquin, the singer-songwriter behind Kroy.
MILITIA, a striking blend of trip-hop, hyperpop, and dark electro-pop, was slated for a release three or four years after its predecessor, Scavenger (2016), but a certain event monopolized our lives from March 2020 onwards, and the Montréal artist opted to work on new material instead.
“By that point, I was struggling to prioritize my solo project,” explains Poliquin, mostly known as one-half of Milk & Bone. “It’s quite the process to trust yourself when a ton of people are soliciting you, and be able to tell yourself, ‘I’m entitled to my own project, too.’ You need to remind yourself that it’s OK to take time for yourself.”
On MILITIA, the 32-year-old paints “a portrait of an imperfect but evolving young woman.” Poliquin revisits tormented episodes of her twenties, a period marked by several emotional shocks, ranging from love at first sight to heartbreak. “The album is a look back on the last decade,” she says. “What that has taught me is that I always deal with what’s going on in my life exactly the same way. It’s like I don’t learn anything. Sure, I’m getting older, but I’m not learning that much… The songs talk about the same things, the same mistakes.”
So, what part of this portrait of imperfection is about “evolution”? “It’s the way of dealing with things that changes,” says Poliquin. “I don’t change as a person. I’m still someone who has tremendous trust in others, and puts her heart on the table. Thing is, it doesn’t serve me so well most of the time… I often feel betrayed; it’s like a re-occurring pattern. What has changed, however, is my way of living with all that. I manage to forgive myself through the betrayal and lies. There’s a humiliation that’s hard to accept.”
Poliquin also puts a lot of trust in others on a musical level, except in such cases, there are no betrayals. For this sophomore album, she reunited with her loyal ally Guillaume Guilbault, a singer-songwriter and producer who’s been by her side since she was a student in Cégep. She also enlisted Max-Antoine Poulin Gendron, a producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist who’s made his mark with Geoffroy, Marie-Mai, and most of all, Milk & Bone. Camille also looked beyond Québec, and teamed up with Toronto producer Goldchain and Californian (by way of Toronto) Casey MQ.
In addition to giving a hip-hop tinge to the rhythmic structure of some tracks, these collaborations imparted some real substance to MILITIA. They acted like the fine-tuning stage after Poliquin raw creative work. Some song drafts actually started on the Montréal artist’s phone. “The songs I prefer, those that feel the most authentic, all started as a voice memo. It’s like a creative burst that just happens… And I need to record it ASAP!”
Select the image to play the YouTube video of the Kroy song “SALTWATER”
These creative bursts, spread over eight years, ended up determining the album title. “Each song is extremely stand-alone,” says Poliquin. “Its own agent, with its own cause to defend. In other words, the album is like 12 agents, or 12 soldiers, that each have something to defend. They all form a small militia.”
Some song titles like “AIRFORCE ONE” or “KILLSWITCH” also evoke a militaristic realm, while other lyrics evoke machinery, robots, and ghosts. “I think my field of lexicon is, at its core, quite violent – and I’m comfortable with that,” says Poliquin. “I like talking about my emotions through hyperbole about robots and cars. I feel safe in that, which is weird!” she admits with a burst of laughter. “As a matter of fact, I’ve realized robots, cars, and weapons terrify me, and my coping mechanism is to talk about it. By doing so, I free myself from it.”
It’s the same mechanism that prompts Camille Poliquin to express her emotions with great vulnerability, through her songs. “As a teen, my most formative moments were listening to The Used or My Chemical Romance in complete darkness,” she says. “I learned to manage my emotions through that darkness. It’s what helped me navigate the more tormented periods of adolescence.”
Is there a downside that comes with exploring that darkness? Can one get bogged down in sadness by constantly trying to free oneself from it? “Turns out I’m comfortable in sadness,” she admits. “Could that be the vestigial remains of Québec’s religious past? Am I stuck in Christian guilt? Maybe! But I clearly have that… I need to suffer.”