The Fly

Interview
Photoshoot
===Interviewhttps://web.archive.org/web/20120504103359/http://www.the-fly.co.uk/feature/interview/1013259/grimes/===
Grimes 
By JJ Dunning
01 May 2012
“IT’S SUCH a long way down,” murmurs Claire Boucher, peering into the empty lift shaft.
In her six inch red velvet platforms, miniskirt and gold fronts, the singer, painter and video artist known as Grimes could not be more inappropriately attired for a trip to a building site. Yet here we are, standing on the third storey of a condemned office block in Montreal’s semi-derelict Outremont district. All the windows have been removed, the floor is littered with crumbs of smashed concrete and shattered glass and fronds of rusting electrical cable spike out from the graffiti-covered walls. On the ground floor lies a recently-abandoned sleeping bag, whilst the steep staircase to the levels above is open to the elements on one side; genuinely, the slightest slip could be fatal. Claire’s mind, on the other hand, couldn’t be further from such potential disasters.
On our way here she is absurdly enthusiastic, offering to carry heavy photographic equipment as she totters precariously through chain-link fences and over a perilously uneven railway embankment. To her, our trip round the corner from the record label’s warehouse HQ carries all the romance of a scene from Stand By Me; the only concern being the idea of going into the unlit basement all alone (“I will never go down there,” she says, “it’s way too creepy”). Odd, really, given that her debut for 4AD - the aloof, brooding ‘Visions’  - is an album perfectly suited to pitch-dark small-hours listening; not least because it was recorded under those exact circumstances.
Back at Arbutus Records’ head office, Boucher explains how the nightmarish atmosphere of her music and the difficulties of suffering from a sleep disorder go together.
“I need to feel alone when I’m making music,” she says. “It needs to feel solitary. There’s no sound at that time: no cars, just emptiness.”
Her knee begins to jiggle impatiently.
“You see that? I think I have some manic problems. If I stop moving I’ll start convulsing. It’s actually a sleep disorder. I only sleep, like, three hours a night.”
Problematic, yes, but it also seems to be the explanation for how Boucher has gotten so much done. Already, large parts of her existence seem to belong to someone else; a timid kid from Vancouver who dedicated most of her early life to ballet and being “a freak”, she eventually came to Montreal to study Neuroscience at McGill University. The diversity of her skills is matched only by the seriousness and meticulousness with which she seems to tackle them.
“As a kid I was really introverted, angry and depressed, but I’ve always been really creative. Before I did music I did ballet forever, but I obsessed over music as a fan and painted constantly. I have books and books of my paintings and comics that I’ve written. But it was never that fulfilling. Music to me is something that is more abstract and emotional. With music you are always doing something. It’s just so emotional. Ballet was chill and painting was chill, but I felt I was doing something that other people did. I thought, ‘I’m good but I’m not breaking any ground’. With music, before I recorded anything, I thought the possibilities were endless. I thought there’s so many things that haven’t been done. I have tonnes of energy. It’s like if I don’t work out and make tonnes of art I’ll start going crazy. I get really bad anxiety; I need to work all the time. Sometimes I get stressed out and can’t work on something because I can take it in so many directions. That’s my issue: there’s too much stuff to do.”
Even now she seems preoccupied, shifting in her seat, exhausted by the outburst.
“It’s great to work with a big label,” she says. “But playing the same songs over and over is hard sometimes. That’s why I love getting into the other things, like music videos…”
Grimes’ need to be occupied has most recently delivered the video to ‘Oblivion’ – filmed in the stands during a college football game at McGill – whilst during our interview she expresses disappointment that the edit of her new video, for ‘Be A Body’, has been rejected by the director. Being a soloist on so many different platforms, is she ever hard to work with?
“I like being the puppet master,” she grins goofily. “I love being in charge – not by being mean to people, but by drawing people in and making them fall in love with me.”
Bizarrely, she says, the key to making this work is all in the branding…
“Grimes will live forever. Grimes is becoming this institution. For me there’s a super strong Grimes aesthetic. But I want to pursue other things. I love branding and marketing; those things are not inauthentic or inartistic; they’re art. They’re playing with culture, playing with people’s minds; it’s manipulation. It’s so fun. I love doing everything; making the images, staring into a camera and having that control. I am this person. I am this idea and this brand.”
“I love the aesthetics of people. I love portraiture. I love art that is heavily focused on people and developing the idea of personality. I feel I’ve exploited that a lot with Grimes. I love the idea of building a person. That’s why Michael Jackson is so magnetic because it’s not just the music, it’s that he has a way of moving that is so captivating. His voice, not only is it good but it’s so imbued with his personality. Like he’s a prince or something; there’s so much work done on building the aura of a prince. That’s art to me.”
Arguably, Grimes is one of the vanguard of a new generation of artists; kids who grew up as the record industry, in its traditional form, was dying; kids who are growing into artists that don’t need to be constrained by just one medium, tethered to something as finite as an album cycle or described purely as a musician. Everything about her – even her gender and her sexuality – wriggle free from any attempt to suppress them with context.
“In my world with my friends, [gender and sexism are] completely irrelevant. People try to define themselves and say I’m gay or bisexual or whatever, but everyone I know is very, very liberal. In my social sphere I realise how incredibly sexist and gendered the world is. Most people see you as a girl so you’re a female before they even meet you. Among my peers that’s irrelevant so I don’t think about it in this world but playing in the ‘real’ world and someone shouts “You’re hot. I want to fuck you”, or something after your show – like happened to me at SXSW – I just think, what world do we live in? I didn’t give a shit about feminism until I started playing music because that was the first time I encountered sexism. In my world it doesn’t exist.”
Certainly, she is androgynous, but that description in itself seems too specific. To look at her – a melange of vaguely cyberpunk wardrobe hung on a slight, boyish frame – she seems the embodiment of the modern artist; an almost sexless new age ghoul, delivered straight from the guts of the internet. It’s a powerful image and one you feel she’s at pains to fully exploit. Of course, inevitably, the real story of Grimes’ childhood is more mundane. But only slightly.
“I was the worst kid,” she says. “I slept around and did tonnes of drugs and I was notorious at my high school for always looking crazy. I would wear four inch platforms and have loads of black eyeliner and I’d carry an umbrella around so I could stay out of the sun and stay pale. I’m still friends with my friends from back then. [As for] my parents and me? Well, my mum kicked me out. Then my dad let me back in. I played them off against each other.”
Her tarot cards, she says, see this side of her very clearly.
“Every time I have [them] read, my final card has always been the devil. It signifies extreme excess to the point of self destruction. That’s definitely the case with me.”
But doesn’t that rather kill off the chances of Grimes living forever?
“Not really,” she grins again. “I’d like Grimes to become more of something else. When I’m 30 I do not want to be touring. I’d rather be directing videos for other people. I’d rather be doing something more in the background, but still as Grimes. Grimes is the umbrella term for everything that I do.”
That it’s said, almost ludicrously, with the fervent zeal of a young entrepreneur, is fitting. To recap: Grimes’ “everything” encompasses music, ballet, audio-visual art, painting and the scientific study of the brain. At 24, Claire Boucher’s already built quite an impressive brand…
‘Visions’ is out now on 4AD.
Category:Interview