In this special column for Atwood Magazine, I explore the impact of one artist and album across the range of my experience in one city or across several cities. The aspiration is that you will resonate with my experiences and how they might intersect with your own life in deepening our understanding and reflection on a particular artist and album in our contemporary world.

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Montréal’s music and self-proclaimed pluridisciplinary artist Camille Poliquin as KROY in her new LP ‘MILITIA’ manifests a remarkably revealing vision that inspires passionate forms of intensity as she lives her songs amidst a scintillating register of despair, longing, and melancholy in illuminating the fleeting moments of life, and in turn she enables us to live more boldly.

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Stream: ‘MILITIA’ – KROY

“KROY has been described as a visionary artist and Montréal’s queen of electropop, and is known for her soaring voice, synth-pop melodies and brooding lyrics.”

We arrived in Montréal on 2 July 2024, and as always, thrilled to inhabit this marvelous gothic city that makes one feel like home amidst its fringe sense of identity of being simultaneous Québécois and Canadian — a city and a province in Canada that is always other. Having grown up in western Canada with its rather monolithic understanding of identity, I always felt the only place that mattered was Québec — the city of Montréal welcomed all sorts of radical understandings of belonging amidst its bilingual orientation which has spawned marvelous forms of lingual and cultural cosmopolitan multiplicities.

Upon arrival, we did what is always best to do in heading to our local SAQ at Place D’Armes. With our treasured bottles of wine in hand and the obligatory small bottle of Ricard, we certainly had to make a stop at the marvelous rooftop terrace on the Hotel Place D’Armes in Vieux-Montréal as we carved ourselves into a bar with a backdrop of one of the most beautiful cities in the world as the tall buildings loomed over us in a way that has been best imagined in your favourite painting. As we later descended into the street we could hear the delightful sounds of a highly talented busker capturing New Order’s “Temptation” in a melodically perfect manner — it was a stunning moment in setting the night alive amidst the setting sun in the shadows of the Notre-Dame Basilica in the charm of Vieux-Montréal.

We sauntered from the rooftop bar with the sound of New Order in our heads and wandered through the cobblestone alleys into a hidden speakeasy for a drink that provided a portal into another intimate dimension of Québécois life until we landed to our temporary home — BRIX. A vibrant vertical apartment community on Rue de Bleury in the Ville-Marie neighborhood where we were staying for a fantastic ten days as we ate the obligatory steak y frites and tartares accompanied by incredible biodynamic wines. We lounged on the brilliant BRIX rooftop while enjoying the crisp cold water of the pool and the late night BBQs where everybody dined in the darkness with their champagne and wines. It was luxurious to meld into the night sky of the skyscrapers as we imagined to lift our beings beyond the world into the gothic identity of Montréal as one gazes towards the seeming infinity of the St. Lawrence River.

Our stay overlapped into the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, and as I was checking out the artists that were slated to perform, I began to become mesmerized with KROY — an artist that was entirely unknown to me. Over the next two days, the only album we listened to on eternal repeat was her Scavenger which became etched into my being as an entrancing portal to this remarkable artist as she peers intensely into the human experience through her evocative musical vision that is like no other.

On Thursday July 4th we firmly decided to see KROY take the TD Stage at the Place Des Festivals at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal at 7:30pm.

With our Prosecchi in hand, we stood in the dusk as KROY unearthed her mortal coil onto the stage, I was entirely transfixed. I had never known the trajectory of Camille Poliquin’s career with Milk and Bone, and within her artistic recreation as KROY, I felt a revolution in mind as to the current Canadian music scene.

KROY’s song “Joligentil,” that we heard live from her new and second feature album MILITIA (released on 16 August 2024), is an absolutely thrilling expansive vision that is almost beyond belief as it soars and heaves in making one think otherwise about life and existence itself. It is also an ultimate refrain on solitude that accompanies us to mortality itself, as KROY proclaims:

Kiss my neck with your teeth and wait
For my pulse to become a drum
Hold my hand with a knife and wait
For my fingers to give you up

I never wanted for this to end
But now I know the truth
It’s just a shame
That you weren’t there
When I needed you

I’m alone now, I’m alone now
I was always here
I’m alone now, I’m alone now
I’ll be forgetting a few years

Kiss my neck with your teeth and wait
For my eyes to kiss you back
Hold me down
With the memories of when
I knew how to fight

I never thought that would turn
Turn your back on me
I wanted to hurt you more
More than you’d hurt me

I’m alone now, I’m alone now
I was always here
I’m alone now, I’m alone now
I’ll be forgetting a few years

I’m alone now
And I don’t know how
How to break the spell
I’m alone now, I’m alone now
And I don’t know who to tell

This definitive sense of intensity does not end as it is thoroughly perpetuated within the penetrating imprints of “Defender” and “Saltwater” which elevate how one can think about the scope of being alive in radically vibrant ways. The perpetual traces of sadness and depression are so ever pervasive in her music, yet as I saw in her performance at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, these songs are totally envisioned to enrapture her listening audience in simultaneously creating a liberation of self. Perhaps there is a similar level of reflection at hand here, as David Bowie throughout his career would stress that all of his songs were about isolation and alienation, yet he inspired people to live beyond existential dilemmas and societal limitations in incredible ways.

KROY is asking us very serious questions about ourselves without any form of reservation through the implosion of MILITIA — her album is a reckoning call of the 21st century. She sets the register of her music deeply within realms of aching wonder that make our soul only beg for more as one sits alone in a room or within the madding crowd.

On other levels of inquiry, her album deepens within reflexive internal refrains on dimensions of loneliness and intimacy through such captivating songs as “The Wolf” and “Creature,” imprints of optimism and joy in “Ghost,” and reflections on betrayal in “Alaat.”

As I was listening to MILITIA, I felt the influences of the 4AD label, registers of Massive Attack, This Mortal Coil, Portishead, and Dead Can Dance. This is a highly majestic album which envisions itself beyond the ages through exploring central human dilemmas that are so vital to our core of what it means to be alive in our simultaneous thrilling and saddening experience of life where we might be bereft of all within any given moment.

As reflected on in her biography:

“After a long wait, KROY returns to unveil the fruits of her lyrical and musical explorations in a new album to be released in 2024. The musician’s new work features dark pop melodies inspired by love, sadness and depression.

The body of work is as old as it is new, some songs rooted in late teen years, others from the dawn of one’s 30s. Every single one of them drenched in sadness and despair, from different perspectives of mania and depression. A portrait of a girl’s evolution through her twenties, gathering confidence, losing it entirely, testing out different personalities, just to come back closer to who she really is.”

On 19 August, 2024, I asked KROY two questions about her artistic vision, the new album Militia, and her performance at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal:

In your new album Militia, you have put forward a highly poignant vision on the themes of sadness, loneliness, depression, and alienation. As I was Iistening to your album, the shards of darkness of ever so penetrating, yet I also felt a genuine sense of emotional intensity that evoked a dimension of optimism. Do you think these sentiments also resonate with your own vision of the album? To elaborate, for someone like David Bowie, his songs throughout his career were always about isolation and alienation, and he created immense forms of catharsis and liberation for his fans through he addressed these existential dilemmas. How do you reflect on this from your own artistic vision?

KROY: i think you’re very spot on in your interpretation. i always write from a place of pain and darkness, but it’s always in order for me to try to make sense of that’s happening, and to begin the process of trying to escape. i’m glad the album doesn’t feel too heavy, and that there is a feeling of optimism seeping through. i think this is very much where you’re finding me today, as the album is released. i feel like i went through a huge moment of darkness in my life and i’m in a place now where, although nothing is finite, i’m feeling a lot better about it all, and in a state where i can accept the darkness, and maybe make friends with it.

I was in attendance at your performance at the Montreal Jazz Festival, and I was truly astounded with your breathtaking musical vision in your remarkable performance. This was the entire spur of writing this piece for Atwood Magazine in NYC. You took a long break from your artistic vision as KROY as your previous album SCAVENGER was released in 2016. I’m wondering what this means to you through your new album to return in recapturing some songs from your youth and in forging new ways to express your musical identity?

KROY: i’m so glad you were able to catch the show at Jazz Fest! i’ll be honest with you, i was so terrified at the idea of performing that show. i hadn’t performed a full 60min set in many years and i wasn’t sure if 1- people would show up and 2- if i would be able to inhabit the space in the way i wanted to. so i was so so so pleasantly surprised when there were thousands of people there and the entire show just felt like a fun game. the boys you saw on stage with me are the same musicians i performed with during the SCAVENGER tour, so i felt safe, both musically and emotionally to perform my songs with them.

when it comes to the break i took, and the songs on the album, i really feel like each song represents its own era of my life. the songs already had their own little identity to them when writing them, and i wanted for them to feel authentic in their musical personality as well. although the sound is different from my first record, i feel like a few songs in there are great gateways between the two. songs like “ALAAT,” “JOLIGENTIL,” and “AIRFORCE ONE” feel to me like a little bridge. my creative identity is ever evolving though. i feel like some things won’t ever change (the colour of my wardrobe, or my inherent sadness) but otherwise i try not to stay too stiff when it comes to where music takes me. i also hope that this record will allow me the confidence to release more music, more often.

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Montréal’s music and self-proclaimed pluridisciplinary artist Camille Poliquin as KROY in her new LP MILITIA manifests a remarkably revealing vision that inspires passionate forms of intensity as she lives her songs amidst a scintillating register of despair, longing, and melancholy in illuminating the fleeting moments of life, and in turn she enables us to live more boldly.

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:: stream/purchase MILITIA here ::

:: connect with KROY here ::

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MILITIA

an album by KROY