The Sydney Morning Herald/2016/Interview

===Interviewhttps://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/grimes-standing-up-to-scrutiny-20160127-gmfhdm.html===
=Grimes: Standing up to scrutiny=
Claire Boucher, aka Grimes, believes in running her own show, writes Anthony Carew.
January 28, 2016 — 11.30am
"How would you feel thinking about lots and lots of people thinking about who you are?" Claire Boucher, the 27-year-old Canadian who records as Grimes, has been the subject of increasing scrutiny – from think-piece-penning journalists to eager fans and naysayers – thanks to the success of her widely hailed fourth album, Art Angels.
These days, Boucher is someone to be talked about and thought about. Much to her unease. "I don't really think about it at all, because it creeps me out ... When you think of people thinking about you, it starts getting uncanny. It's a weird thought."
Given Boucher's beginnings, the upwardly mobile arc of Grimes is its own weird thought. Her first two LPs, 2010's Geidi Primes and Halfaxa, were experimental, lo-fi noise pieces, recorded in her Montreal bedroom and released for free download by label-as-artist-co-op Arbutus. Boucher's dark, eerie productions set her high, washed-out, indecipherable vocals over fragmented beats and ambient layers; a beautiful, strange sound that hardly suggested future stardom.
"Having anyone care at all seemed pretty ambitious to me," Boucher says. "Honestly, when I started out, I didn't think anyone would even listen to it. I didn't even have a publicist, I just emailed a couple of blogs. The first blog that wrote about my first album, I felt like I was already at the top, like I'd already made it."
The first inklings of "breakout" came with a 2011 split 12-inch with fellow Montreal oddball d'Eon, Darkbloom. It birthed the song Vanessa, which boasted cleaner production, an earworm refrain and an eye-catching video directed by Boucher. That led her to signing with indie institution 4AD, which issued the third Grimes LP, Visions, to much acclaim in 2012. Boucher again wrote, recorded and produced the record and directed the videos for singles Oblivion and Genesis.
That DIY autonomy defines Grimes as project; something Boucher was adamant about maintaining even after signing with Jay Z's management company Roc Nation in 2013 and setting out to record Art Angels. "I prefer to do everything by myself," she says. "It's how I made my first records, alone in my room, and so that became the way that I work."
For Art Angels, Boucher challenged herself to learn guitar and violin, and push her production to a "higher level".
"I didn't want people to be able to make the argument that a different producer could've done a better job," Boucher says. "I want people to stop acting like I should just be a singer and leave the other stuff to someone else. People would often say to me 'You need a band! You need a band!' I really wanted people to stop saying that, to just let me be me."
Boucher declines to say which people exactly – "I don't want to throw anyone under the bus" – but it's clear that, dipping a toe in the world of for-real pop, she encountered a different set of expectations and a more urgent timetable.
"People were getting really stressed. Like 'the record has to come out'. So they were offering me suggestions for ways we could make it move faster," Boucher says. "I could've done that by delegating responsibilities. But I don't want to get session musicians. I don't want to get a producer. I feel like, maybe I'm only an OK musician, but I'm a really good producer. I know I'm a really good producer."
Eventually, Art Angels arrived, almost four years after Visions. Boucher's happy she waited. "I think three years is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to make a record: [Nine Inch Nails'] Downward Spiral took three years, [No Doubt's] Tragic Kingdom took three years," she says. "The goal is to live up to a certain standard. One of the ways I feel like Art Angels is better than Visions is that the songs are really there. The songs are as strong as any of the production."
Buoyed by tunes like the bright California and kinetic Kill v. Maim, Art Angels dented charts (debuting at No. 30 in Australia) and was all over album-of-the-year lists. But Boucher remains doubtful of success ("I'm always stressed out it's going really badly; every time we play a show, I'm sure that no one's going to show up") and, after a heavy run of press for the album, a suddenly circumspect interviewee.
Years ago, Boucher would throw herself into conversations; happy to tell tales from her wild past (most infamously about the drugs she took making Visions, and a DIY-house-raft trip down the Mississippi one college summer) and talk extemporaneously about bringing feminist ideals into an industry that still treats young females as flesh to be peddled. But Boucher is now more guarded, more anxious.
"I'm very timid about interviews these days," Boucher says. "It really scares me because you never know how it's going to go. You're putting a lot of trust in somebody. They have access to you saying things, and then they can edit your words as they please. I've had some very, very bad experiences with that."
She cites a recent profile in The New Yorker, which forwarded the idea that Grimes' outspoken internet presence and prolific Tumblr profile have been just as influential as her music.
"I find that an odd thought to even have, let alone such a condescending statement to then make," Boucher says. "I'm definitely an internet age artist. I wouldn't exist without the internet. Twenty years ago, no label in the world would've signed me off my first album and nobody would've heard it. But my internet presence is extremely contentious and I mostly just get, like, hate. The internet is a source of daily problems. I'm wary about it now and shy away from saying certain things online. But, ultimately, you've gotta just chill and not worry about the hate."
Grimes is in the country for Laneway Festival
Category:InterviewCategory:2016