Coming up Roses in life and career
Béatrice Martin has grown up in public.
Martin — better known by her stage name, Coeur de pirate — was 18 when her self-titled debut album came out in 2008, and it was an immediate sensation, first in Quebec and quickly thereafter in France. Fast-forward just under seven years, and Martin is an even bigger star on both sides of the Atlantic.
Much has also changed in her personal life. After a high-profile relationship with Jay Malinowski, lead singer with the Toronto band Bedouin Soundclash, she married French tattoo artist Alex Peyrat in 2012 and their daughter, Romy, will turn three early next month.
All of those changes are reflected in Coeur de pirate’s third album, Roses.
“I grew up, that’s for sure, and that’s important,” Martin said in a recent interview. “I think I’ve put myself in danger a lot as well. I’ve questioned myself a lot. You need to do that to progress as an artist. Just doing this (album) in English and French — that’s putting myself on the spot. Maybe I’ll get criticized for it, or maybe I’m going to get praised for it. I don’t know. But it’s good for me and it’s good for the people that listen to me.”
Roses is light years removed from the first all-French Coeur de pirate album, and not just because seven of the 11 tracks are in English. The debut Coeur de pirate album was built around Martin’s distinctive voice and piano stylings. Her second long player, Blonde (2011), had a bigger, more retro pop sound, but Roses is something else altogether.
It’s a richly textured contemporary pop album that was clearly made with the notion that it could well play on radio stations all over the planet. And that might just happen. Roses is out in Canada via Montreal indie Dare to Care Records, and Barclay will release it in France. But it is going to be launched in the rest of the world via Cherrytree Records, a Los Angeles-based label that is a joint venture with Interscope Records and has a star-studded roster that includes Ellie Goulding, Feist, Keane and La Roux.
The more polished sound came with the help of a trio of notable international producers: Sweden’s Björn Yttling, who is one-third of the band Peter Bjorn and John and has produced Franz Ferdinand, Chrissie Hynde and Lykke Li; England’s Rob Ellis, who has twirled the knobs for PJ Harvey, Anna Calvi and Marianne Faithful; and Ash Workman, another British producer who has worked with Metronomy and Christine and the Queens.
“I literally let Björn do whatever he wanted to do, because I was such a fan of his work,” she said.