Crucifixes, Belgium, and Erectile Dysfunction - An Interview With Dogo Suicide

On Friday evening, I had the chance to interview Quebec City's “post-everything but a little punk overall” band Dogo Suicide before their show at Turbo Haus. 

The band, consisting of guitarist and main songwriter Nicolas Côté, bassist Emmanuel and drummer Richard William Turcotte, have been touring most of the last month for their third, longest and newest  EP,  Apologie du Menteur

Sonam:  

First question, how has the tour been for the new EP? Like, overall.

Nicolas:  

Ah, not so bad. We had some really great shows and some really awful shows.

Richard:  

Like, we had a full house show for our first gig on the tour for the album launch in QC, then we also had a four-member audience show in St. Honore. 

Sonam: 

Do you find that the smaller the area you guys go, the less well-attended it is? 

 Nicolas: 

Depends. We had some, like, smaller shows in Montreal too. But, yeah, it really depends. Sometimes we go to, like, really smaller towns, and there's a lot of people.

Sonam: 

That kind of leads into the next question. From what I know, you mostly tour around Quebec and I see a lot of places on your bills that I didn’t even know bands toured. I'm wondering if you guys were to do a larger tour, do you guys have any places you really want to play? Would you mostly stick to Francophone areas? 

Richard:  

We thought about playing in the eastern part of Canada, yeah? So yeah, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and also the western part, like Vancouver, British Columbia, yeah,

Nicolas: 

I'd like to do a full Canadian Tour. We’d also think about doing Europe. I mean, we just played a show in Belgium.

Sonam:

I was just going to ask,  how was that?

Richard:

insanely cool!

Nicolas: 

It was only one show, but it was one great show. So that's great. It was one of the greatest shows of the tour. 

Richard 

The response from the public was really good. Oh yeah. Actually, we were not sure about how the music would be received. 

Nicolas:  

Because the first, the first artist to perform that night was like an acoustic singer-songwriter, and it was like, really, like slow and classical guitar, yeah, really slow vibe, like calm music.

Richard:  

Very storytelling music,

N: 

And, you know, in Belgium, they have this law about the decibels, and there's like, this meter just right across the stage, so you always know how loud you are... And it's like, 103 maximum, but we were like 115 the whole show. So we busted.

Sonam: 

I feel like that's kind of cool. It's like those carnival games where you hit the hammer,

I'm glad the response was good because there's lots of times where that happens, where it's like, the opener is not always the same vibe. 

R: (translated from French)

It was great, it really paid off for networking, like getting to know people on-site and getting contacts for a future Europe tour with more tours.

Sonam:

So this is also related to the touring question, but I know that, like I imagine at least touring in one province primarily has, like, some really interesting benefits, but also some really interesting challenges, do you guys have any off-the-tops of your heads? 

Richard: 

One of the interesting advantages is that people can relate to you and they remember you.  So if you play Quebec, Montreal, or Saguenay and then you go to Gaspesie, and you do it again, a second time, third time, people are gonna remember that night and come and see you again and bring their friends. And each time you return to that place, it gets bigger and bigger.

Manu: 

Not always, sometimes it's smaller and smaller depending.

S: 

Well, then you know not to go back

R: 

As for what's inconvenient, for Quebec is the distance, because it costs a lot too. But what would you say? 

Nicolas: 

It's always a weird thing for Quebec bands to tour, because there's this thing with the language in Canada, like, and we sing in French, yeah? So, you know, in Ontario, there's some French-speaking people, and a bit in New Brunswick, but that's it. So it's really about Quebec, and when you go outside of these borders, it's really only English, so you're always labelled as the band who sings in French. So there's always this thing, but we kind of like it. It's not a negative thing. It's just a thing. It is. They cannot relate to the lyrics.

Nicolas: 

We're really looking forward for more Europe.

Sonam: 

I feel like there would be a lot of potential there because we think that Canada's very bilingual, but not like in Europe. Like, you know, the average cashier speaks like, five languages and you're just here.

Nicolas: 

But even though we talked about going to the US would be cool too, yeah, we like the East Coast or West Coast,

Richard: 

we would play too. We would like to play. Sorry, to play anywhere.

Nicolas: 

Yeah, we don't really care. We don't really care,

Richard: 

but at least if the people are accepting our music and that we speak French, it's okay.

Sonam:

I saw that on your guy's Instagram. You said that your EP was recorded beside a church and a bakery.

Is there anything else about the recording, like experience that was, I don't know different or was it kind of standard for what you guys do? 

Richard: 

So we were staying in the rectory which is the, you know, the house where the priest lives. So there was, like, the church, the house, we were saying, which was a physical and there was the bakery. And, like, in the house, it was really weird, because there were a lot of crosses, like, all over. It was full of them. And in only one room, the bathroom, the single bathroom with only the toilet, and it was, you know, wall to wall, the Red Room, there were at least 400 crosses on the walls. 

Sonam:

Do you think that, like, added a certain energy to the recording?

Nicolas: 

We were really quiet and focused on the recording. So we just went there to sleep, and we just had fun, like watching that. But the recording itself, we recorded with Zachary Parle, who is now pretty much a good friend of ours, and his studio is in a farm, on the second floor of a very huge barn. And on the first floor, It's a vineyard, so there's some of those big fields that you can see from the studio. Oh, that sounds really

Ric

Yeah. Each row of grapes has their names, which are the names of the clients that are helping to harvest. So, yeah, each year they have some special editions of wines and ciders. It’s a really beautiful place, yeah. 

Sonam;  

I gotta say, one thing I like really stood out when you guys put up the new EP was the cover. It's crazy because it's like a painting. It's really well done. But also this figure on the cover. I recognized him (he was sitting with them before we went outside for the interview). What I'm so intrigued by is the getup and conceptually, what's the connection?

Nicolas; 

We just like the idea of someone being on the stage and doing absolutely nothing. So that's just the funniest thing ever, like, a huge contrast, nice, yeah, yeah,

Richard; 

It's kind of a joke. But at the same time, an artistic way of presenting a guy, I don't know. 

Nicolas; 

It's not deep, you know, it's not like, a deep thing. We just found it funny. He's a friend of ours.

It was kind of a stunt in the same way. 

Sonam:

yeah, it's performance art, yeah, but he does nothing, I don't know. Yeah, that's, it's hard to do. Yeah, he's really good at it, all right?

Richard:

It's impossible. Just try it for 10 minutes and

Sonam: 

One thing I also am very curious about is your song “Contresens".  Could you explain a bit what it means? Something about misunderstanding? 

Nicolas:   

At first, the song was, how do we say it in English? Oh, “Dysfonction Erectile” (everyone started laughing at this point). 

I never thought someone was gonna ask that question, about that specific song, but that was the idea of not being able to satisfy someone's needs. That's the idea of the song. So it's, like, started up as a joke, but you know the lyrics, if you read the lyrics, you cannot say it's about one specific thing.

Sonam

I was also gonna ask, like, on that topic, do you  Nicholas, do like all of the writing and

Nicolas: 

 In the beginning was really me coming with the whole songs, like I take the whole demos and say 

“let's play that”. And then throughout the recordings, we started doing Arrangements. For “Apologie” really, I came up with all the riffs. And we jam. We just jammed it in the jam space, and it made it greater. 

But right now, we're already working on some new stuff, and we have, like, a specific workflow right now with Manu, which is Manu writes a lot of riffs, and we do a lot of we-transfer back and forth, of like, riffs, and we have a lot of demos, and once they're ready, we show it to Rich and he does the drums. 

Sonam: 

That's really great. Well I don't have any more questions, I think that might be, that might be it. Thank you again for your time and willingness to do the interview in English, I really appreciate that. 

 

 

After that ended, they let me know that they're hoping to start to plan on making an album soon, if they can finance it, as record making can be so expensive.  So keep your eyes and ears peeled for that, and if you're curious, you can support the band on Bandcamp, streaming services and as always by attending shows. 

The show itself was high energy and exciting. Opening band “Autre Part” warmed up the audience for an atmospheric evening of wall of sound, distorted and reverb-soaked melodic rock, playing songs from their new album Le pire est à venir. 

Dogo took the stage after a short break, the show beginning with a recorded monologue being played in complete darkness, before launching into the title song from their 2021 EP Sexe pour les yeux. As you watch the band play, you notice a fourth individual on stage: a man dressed head to toe in all red, with a huge pair of chromatic sports sunglasses, a backwards baseball hat and a pint in hand. He stood off to the side, only ever moving to turn his head, stare at the audience, sip from his glass and maneuver around the band's energetic playing. If you’ve listened to the EP, you would recognize this individual as the man on the cover (as well as the kick drum head). This man would stay on stage the whole show, continuing his routine and always seeming to have a full glass (I’m still confused as to how). 

Aggressive and distorted, the band continued to play, with the bulk of their set being their newest EP played in full. Well rehearsed and quick, the band brought the same quality and precision as the recording, playing at full power and energy the whole time. Every song ended with a quick “merci” from frontman Nicolas before the band would launch seamlessly into the next song. 

During the intro to their instrumental song “Contrejour”, the audience was surprised to hear the song's trumpet part being played from right within the audience as it continued into the following song on the record, “Contresens”. By far one of their strongest songs, starting off with very heavy layers of bass and guitar as the song roller coasters between screaming verses, speedy instrumental builds, jaunty, start-stop and melodic riffs, three-part vocal harmonies and the heaviest of distorted space rock breakdowns. 

Finishing the set with some songs from older EPs, a grateful thank you after each one, the band delivered a very loud, very energetic and very unique performance that made for a really great evening of really heavy tunes.