Philippe B Looks Back Without Regret on Cigale▪

Philippe B has been writing songs for over 20 years, but he’s never made a record quite like Cigale. His seventh album, arriving March 13, digs into his past more directly than anything he’s done before. After years of working in autofiction, he’s finally talking about his own life without the usual distance.

“First, there is the fact that I allowed myself to talk more specifically about being an artist, a musician, songwriter etc… which brought more specificity to the storytelling,” Philippe explains. “Also, maybe the distance time-wise made me more comfortable with it being so real and personal.”

He named the album after Jean de La Fontaine’s fable about the cicada who sang all summer while the ant prepared for winter. It’s a parable he knows well. Philippe spent all of his twenties wrestling with that same choice between art and security. “Well, almost…” he clarifies. “When Pierre Lapointe hired me as his guitarist was when I started to make a living as a musician, and I was about 28 years old at the time.”

The first single, “La jeunesse est un autre pays,” explores generational divides and how we see things differently as we age. Looking back at his younger self while writing these songs, Philippe found something unexpected.

“The fact that I am ok with my life right now allows me to be at peace with anything negative I could feel about my youth,” he says. “I kind of see it like a movie with ups and downs that ultimately ends well, and I have a lot of empathy for the flawed main character!”

These are songs about his twenties that he could never have written at the time. “Obviously there are things I could have done better, in both my personal and professional life, but I now see that those years were like the incubation of the songwriter I am now, in form and content.”

The arrangements on Cigale sound stripped back, almost skeletal in places. Philippe says that came from the lyrics. “Some of these new songs have a lot more lyrics than usual for me, so in a lot of cases I thought it best to let it breathe musically and let the words do the heavy lifting.”

His relationship with songwriting itself has shifted over two decades. “Early on it was a little bit more about making choices, defining my style and finding my voice and my identity,” he reflects. “These days I feel more like I know who I am and what I’m doing and now the work is to do THAT thing better.”

Growing up in Rouyn-Noranda and trying to make it in Quebec’s music scene wasn’t easy. “At the time (the pre-internet 90’s), it was a challenge to find venues for alternative music, especially in French, where you could have a paying gig,” he recalls. “I played in cover bands a little bit (there were a lot of cover bands…), but there were very few opportunities for Francophone alternative music.”

Philippe’s work has ranged from classical reinterpretations on Variations fantômes to stripped-down folk, but he says he mostly stays in one lane. “Even though I pretty much stay in the acoustic singer-songwriter lane as an artist, I like to listen to a lot of different music. I also very much enjoy the process of writing and arranging, and it’s fun to grab things here and there and see how I can make them fit in my folk singer stuff.”

He’s also written lyrics for Safia Nolin and Pierre Lapointe and produced records for other artists. Those collaborations shift his perspective. “Yes it does, especially since I work very much alone on my own project. So those collaborations really help open my mind and keep things fresh. It keeps me humble and curious, and dare I say… sane!”

Philippe plays three consecutive nights at La Sala Rossa in Montreal on May 14, 15, and 16 to celebrate the release. After all these years, he has something not every artist gets. “I’m not super well known to all, but I do have a loyal fanbase that enables me to know that a song I’m working on will be heard and that there will be people in the seats when I get on stage. That makes the whole process meaningful and worthwhile.”

The album announcement came two months after an excerpt of Chelsea mon amour, a song from his 2008 album Taxidermie, appeared in the TV series Heated Rivalry. His 2011 album Variations fantômes landed on end-of-year lists from Le Devoir and La Presse and was named best album of the 2010s by CISM. Later records Ornithologie, la nuit, La grande nuit vidéo, and Nouvelle administration earned nominations at the ADISQ Galas, the JUNOs, and spots on the Polaris Prize long list.

With Cigale, Philippe B is finally telling his own story straight. The cicada sang all summer. Winter came. He’s still here, still singing, at peace with how it all turned out.

Cigale releases March 13 on LP, CD, and digital formats. Philippe B tours Quebec through May and June, with shows in Frelighsburg, Val-Morin, Sherbrooke, and Quebec City in addition to the three La Sala Rossa dates.