No Excuse Not to Listen to ‘Parry & Dolly’ - New Project by Maxim Lepage
Armed with a master's degree in musicology from UdeM and decades' worth of experience across TV, Theater, and Videogames, Maxim Lepage tackles music in an audiovisual project titled "Parry & Dolly" with which he hopes to explore avenues of music and creativity even beyond the scope of what he previously had.
Lepage has long worked in creating the on-stage music for the prestigious Cirque Du Solei, this directly influenced the sound of this new project, only it's taken in a different direction entirely "light, colorful, electronic almost pop." he describes it, a complementary contrast to much of his previous work.
"Colorful" is certainly a good way to put it, as the animated music video for "Late Again Making Excuses" certainly shows. The song features vocals by Montreal multi-hyphenate artist Alexia Gourd and lyrics by Oscar Louis, Alexia Gourd, and Maxim himself, who also just so happened to have created the music video as well - a very peculiar piece that somehow doesn't quite seem like it belongs to our audiovisual era, instead looking like it should be on heavy rotation on MTV sometime before the release of the very first iPhone - That is to say, the video is not quite retro but it has a warm feel to it across every single frame that I can only describe as nostalgic and even innocent.
I'm almost there
Just paid the fare, go in, go in
I'd rather be lonely
Social affair, Don't know why
I ain't got no time to be on time
The bubbly pop sound belies some of the inherent sadness of the song, as its lyrics very clearly deal with social anxiety and how incredibly difficult it can be to just step out of your house to face the world for some "social affair".
But Parry & Dolly is so much more than the one song, it is in fact a whole 6-song EP with tons of colors and dimensions to discover, with diverse songs like "Thousand Lies" which branch out into undeniably danceable territory, and the Glitchy "Andorea" which offer a much more moody and ambiance-focused soundscape.
Previous to this release he made two albums under the artist name of Monsieur Max (Oncle Bijou - 2006, Ida & Gaspara - 2010) which was nominated for best electronic album of 2006 at ADISQ.