Barber for the Queen burst back onto the scene this fall with a blistering new single that fuses their signature disco grooves with jagged alternative rock, proving once again why this Montreal-bred quintet—sparked to life in 2017 by the irrepressible frontman Jean-Raphaël Côté and Zachary Beaudoin on guitar, then rounded out by the razor-sharp talents of Simon Boisseau, Matis De Koninck, and Mathis Beauséjour—has spent years owning sweaty clubs and festival stages across the city, turning casual listeners into hip-shaking converts with their ecstatic blend of psych-rock psychedelia, indie swagger, and unrelenting funky rhythms. After honing a catalog that already hooks everyone from casual ravers to die-hard sonic explorers, they’ve dropped this latest record just in time to fuel a hunger for live chaos, where Côté‘s wild-eyed extravagance and the band’s frantic, pulse-pounding rhythm section guarantee no one’s left standing still!
Now, dive into our sit-down with the crew as they spill on their latest single ‘I GOT ALL MY TIME’, what shaped them, and what’s next.
Let’s rewind to 2017—Jean-Raphaël, Zachary, what was that first jam session like that sparked Barber for the Queen, and how did Simon, Matis, and Mathis crash the party to make it a quintet?
Jean, Zach and Simon all come from the Montreal south-shore and when we were teenagers, finding other musicians with the same interests wasn’t that easy, so Zach and Jean contacted each other through a common friend and jammed on Pink Floyd, 13th Floor Elevators and The Doors tunes and hit it off. They later formed a trio with a drummer and Zach met Simon while they were attending the same high school, then invited him to join the band. Through those couple of years there were a bit of lineup changes but the core of the band remained. When we went to college, Zach met both Matis and Mathis while studying Jazz music and the three found they had similar music tastes and inspirations. Matis joined as the new bass player and Mathis then also joined as drummer helping the band’s aspirations to play funkier, tighter compositions.
Montreal’s scene is a beast—how has grinding it out in spots like Foufounes Électriques or Petit Campus shaped the frantic energy you bring to every show?
The couple first times we played Petit Campus were kind of last-minute surprises, as we were often asked to play first parts of touring bands. Obviously we wanted to get a new crowd’s attention by being overly present and energetic, which then made us see what kind of energy we were able to attain in these kinds of situations. I think realizing that the listener’s response was to be as crazy as we were fed us with more energy and made us want to implement that to every performance we play. It’s then become a signature for us to each have our kind of unhinged side and create our own character we want to be when going out on stage.
Your sound pulls from disco’s shine to psych-rock’s haze—what’s one underrated 70s or 80s track that’s been on repeat in the van lately, and why does it hit different now?
Although we have a somewhat consistent sound with inspirations bleeding through our music, we all have different genres of music that specific members love more than others. From Indie, Folk, Pop, Funk, Rock, Jazz, Punk and Metal, we all have our fetish bands, but a song that might stand out as our common go to on the road would probably be ‘Passion Flower’ (Translation from the Japanese title) on the Pacific album by Shigeru Suzuki, Haruomi Hosono and Tatsuro Yamashita. Another one that’s been heavily in rotation lately would be ‘You’re a Prisoner’ by Death. The Pacific album has been a classic for us since we started listening to Disco, Funk and in this instance City Pop. We’re always suckers for great melodies and musicianship that serve songs to their fullest potential. As of lately, some of us have been into more extreme genres of music from Hyperpop to Punk or Metal, and Death has been a band that joined melody and great songwriting to a heavier sound, which we love.
With BABA dropping in 2023 as your big leap, what surprised you most about how fans latched onto tracks like “DKWIDW” with Goodbye Karelle?
With ‘DKWIDW’, we had this sound that was kind of a bridge to what we wanted to do with our next album. By this point, we were gonna release a whole album of almost only pure funky disco songs and as a band that always had an eclectic sound; starting as and indie rock band, making a lo-fi synth pop EP and then making BABA, we always love to fuck with expectations. Releasing ‘DKWIDW’ as a single back then seemed to be more challenging and foreseeing of what was coming next in our catalog. The more modern-sounding production of that song might be a reason why people would gravitate towards it. Maybe the feature from Goodbye Karelle was also a new texture the band hadn’t meddled with at this point and made people interested in what we were doing. As these things go, you can never really point out what makes people love a song and maybe finding out wouldn’t make us understand that much more.
That viral street performance in June—pure chaos or calculated madness? Walk us through the moment the crowd just… lost it.
Playing that show was a pretty fun moment for us. We always love playing to totally new people and it was a perfect occasion for that as it was a free open show in Downtown Montreal. We started playing to a very little audience and people would walk by, but by the middle of the show, a crowd started to form and people started dancing with other strangers which undeniably made us want to go a little more crazy. We extended some jams so that Simon and Jean could go dance with people in front of the stage, we pulled out some of our older psychedelic freak outs from the early days and played newer songs to the audience. It was also a great moment to share music with some people from our city who don’t have the chance to go see more pricey performances. Overall it was a great time for us and the people who gave all their energy to dance and participate in the show.
‘Starstruck’ captures that dizzy nightlife spiral so vividly—Jean-Raphaël, was there a real honey who walked into a room and nearly broke you down, or is it all fever-dream fiction?
Yes there was. At the time, I was in love with someone who made me feel kind of starstruck. Writing that song and getting it all out on paper made me realize what I was really feeling and what kind of relationship I was living in. It’s a subject that inspired me throughout the whole new album and a lot of the songs I wrote have a tendency to touch on that subject. Usually I think that all our songs, even if the topic becomes romanticized, stem from a very real situation we’re living in and we process it the way we know; by writing songs.
Blending alternative rock into your funky rhythms for this fall’s album feels like a bold pivot—what sparked that evolution, and how did the band hash out keeping the dance floor sacred amid the psych twists?
As mentioned earlier, we always love to go against expectations and being bold musically has always been kind of our mantra. There’s always been an urge to almost start from scratch when starting on a new album or project. We rethink every way we compose or change every source that inspires us. Every new album is a journey through new sounds as we search for new musical landscapes and this time, we ended up going back to our childhoods. We all grew up being around ten years old when pop stars like The Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga or LMFAO were at their peak. Those were big influences on us throughout all our years of learning and making music, whether we liked it or not at the time. The plan on our new album was to embrace the music we grew up on and see how it fitted our own universe and previous influences for the project. It ended up being something completely different then what inspired us and when you don’t know what your music sounds like it’s easier to just call it Alt Rock even though we clearly don’t sound like Pearl Jam! Of course we still keep the dance floor as a special place in our hearts and the psychedelia has always been part of our sound, they’re both still part of how we make the band sound.
After years owning the Montreal underground, eyeing horizons like The New Colossus in NYC— what’s the one fear that’s kept you up at night about breaking out bigger?
No fear really, just a lack of openings. We’re still independent in every single aspect of the band; we book our shows, we record and produce our own music but we’re always open to change our ways. We’re still looking to broaden our reach but sometimes we lack a bit of help; juggling between booking our own gigs, recording on our dime, releasing and sharing our work with the resources on hand. We try our best at seeing opportunities that will bring us further and in that way we slowly grow our project at the pace that’s possible for the time being.
‘I Got All My Time’ lands like a reflective gut-punch amid the frenzy—how does time feel different for you guys now, post-BABA and with this new record charging ahead?
‘I Got All My Time’ was a song that originally had a more spacey, softer sound originally being written by Jean on a piano. When Jean brought it to Zach, they worked on a more focused, heavier type of song. The times were different as opposed to the BABA sessions which were more oriented on having songs in the vein of bands like Zapp or Lakeside. IGAMT was more of a mashup of listening to Katy Perry, 100gecs and Anthrax. Quite opposites! This kind of spirit was brought to every session we did on that album as a way of making something completely new. With the album release we feel something completely different than what we felt releasing BABA, in a good way. We keep elements of these sessions close. We still love that people can dance to our music and we still love the elements of a good groove.
If you could teleport the whole crew back to one wild gig from your early homemade EP days—say, l’Escogriffe or CJLO—what’s the ridiculous story you’d relive over beers right now?
One our first gigs was a big party at a barn on a farm owned by one of our old friend’s parents. It was a big open field and everyone brought their tents to sleep there after the show. We brought over all of our gear and met another band we became friends with and also played a lot of our first gigs in Montreal clubs. It was such a beautiful evening and I think going back to the early days, it would be a show and party we would relive any day. There’s also a less flattering moment when we did a show in Toronto where the sound man didn’t get our technical rider. When we came in, he saw our gear and told us we couldn’t play the show! Our setup was too complicated and he didn’t want to bother with us. He was so mad he stormed out of the venue telling us if we wanted to play, we’d have to set up all the cables feeding the mixing console; which is what we did. He came back smelling like weed and seemed a bit more relaxed. He finally let us play and as always we had a great time performing our set.
Stream ‘I Got All My Time’:
