Finding Light in the Darkness With Fauvely
Finding glimpses of joy in a state of sadness and glimmers of light in bouts of darkness is a craft that many of us sharpened in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic unexpectedly turned the world upside down. The pandemic changed the way society operates and took everyone by siege, but the artistic and creative industries stand among the most affected communities— Especially those artists and musicians who operate on an independent scale, handling everything from recording to booking tours on their own.
Chicago’s own Fauvely belongs to that independent category, but that didn’t stop the project from carrying on and finding the bright side through the content they create. Lead vocalist and songwriter of Fauvely, Sophie Brochu, took some time in March to catch up with me on a phone call to talk everything from quarantine habits to navigating a CDC-compliant practice and recording space for the band.
“It’s weird. It’s a beautiful road because there’s marsh grass but then it’s also really creepy because there’s a mysterious old chemical factory and an ugly confederate fort,” Brochu says, detailing her surroundings on an evening stroll in Savannah. While Fauvely still has roots in Chicago, Brochu is taking the call in the Georgia city where she grew up; a city she and her husband have recently been spending time in thanks to the remote flexibility that the pandemic has provided.
Like many of us, Brochu expresses feelings of uncertainty and anxiety about where she may land once a sense of normalcy begins to return to the world. For now, she says the band are not turning down any opportunity that may come their way— or at least not allowing their current locations to be the deciding factor. For example, the group recently recorded a session with Audiotree in Chicago, which is slated to be released April 8th. Without a specific location acting as their anchor for the time being, Brochu says “I don’t know what that looks like for the future of the band. I do know that I’m not going to stop doing Fauvely. It exists wherever it goes.”
Photo by Aaron Ehinger // Fauvely is Sophie Brochu, Dale Price, Dave Piscotti and Phil Conklin
Our conversation took place on the anniversary of a poignant date— the day when Brochu and her husband had attended a pop up event at The Loyalist in the West Loop, showcasing cuisine from their own restaurant that had been slated to open later on in 2020. That night followed the news that Fauvely’s upcoming plans to tour Japan and appear at SXSW festival had been canceled, lending a bittersweet air to the event. “It was a happy night, but I remember being really heartbroken because we had just officially canceled the Japan tour,” Brochu recalls.
After that initial heartbreak and shock of such major events getting shut down, Brochu details a dark time period in early lockdown days. “I could not do anything except for puzzles. I was still working remotely, but I couldn’t read, I couldn’t write. I just had a lot of anxiety and did puzzles. That was what I had the capacity and space for.” Eventually, members of Fauvely were able to start getting together for masked practices after remaining isolated to stay safe. Despite a few delays caused by the uncertainty of the times, the band ended up heading to the studio in July with a goal of recording as much as they could; which led to them finishing up the new record Beautiful Places. “I sort of see that as the silver lining with South By [Southwest] and Japan getting canceled since that’s where most of the money would be going. It was like let’s recalibrate and make something good come from this,” Brochu says.
Surprisingly, although the duality theme that is threaded through the album seems to align with a common sentiment of the pandemic, most of the songs on Beautiful Places were drafted before 2020. The one exception was “May3e,” which Brochu wrote in May and had the original file name of “May 3rd.” “I like the idea of making each song a little time capsule. It’s nice to know the date when it was written. That was the last song written for the album. A lot of the songs we had already been working on the months leading up to that spring. That was the last one that made it on.”
Brochu credits a spiritual approach and her intuition as the driving factors behind her creative motivation. “I don’t like to force it. I know it’s always right around the corner. When it comes, it comes really fast. That’s how my songwriting goes. I’m just like a vessel walking around waiting for the message.” She also remains consistently influenced by the juxtaposing duality of nature as a muse and source of inspiration. “In nature, everything is laid out before you. When an animal in the wild dies, it decays out in the open, sometimes against a beautiful backdrop. There is no difference between beauty and suffering; it is one and the same. Humans have a funny way of quantifying and categorizing what is beautiful and what is repulsive. We want to preserve life. We have euphemisms and rituals. Fauvely is about blurring this line. For me, it's always had this underlying current of sadness and grief that only exists because of beauty. These are relative concepts. I know my happiness because of my pain. I feel pain because I've experienced great happiness. Experiencing life is a privilege,” Brochu says, explaining the underlying message of the new album. “These songs cannot be reduced to ‘sad songs.’ They're about choosing life with all of its pain and beauty and suffering. I'm reminded of Good Bones by Maggie Smith,” she adds, crediting the poem as an inspiration.
Along those same lines of making the choice to persevere despite challenging times, Brochu shares more about the band’s experience in the recording studio. True to 2020’s form with delays and cancellations, Fauvely’s recording session in July only came to be following some initial postponements. “Then the weekend that we were supposed to start recording, one of the band members had a family emergency and we were about to cancel again. They decided to push through and find a way to make it work so the band member could be there for the family and still do what they love in the studio with us,” Brochu says. While the circumstances weren’t ideal, she adds, “It was so meaningful and we all really wanted to be there doing what we love. It was a beautiful feeling of coming together.” Throughout this strange year, the band has continued to be there for one another, keeping in touch every day and supporting one another through the recording process. “It was a really beautiful experience because we all value and love one another and respect each other. We work so well together, and I truly love these guys. They make this project what it is. It would never be the same without them,” Brochu concludes.
Despite all the obstacles, release day for Beautiful Places finally came on Friday, April 2nd. While it’s not an ideal time to release music since bands and musicians can’t tour to promote their new work, new music like this record gives us something to grasp onto as we await for the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel.
Brochu hopes to be able to tour and play shows with Fauvely again as soon as possible, but in the meantime she’s already endeavored to continue writing— both in songwriting form and in the shape of a novel. Brochu does issue a disclaimer that the new music and her book project will be released in the distant future, but promises new music videos are in the works and coming soon.
As soon as it’s safe to host in person concerts, you can definitely expect to catch Fauvely on the first ANCHR showcase line up. For now keep an eye out for their Audiotree recorded performance being released this week, and snag your own copy of Beautiful Places here.