A DASH OF THE GARLICS,
A TON OF TALENT

Learning a second language is hard enough. Ask some foreign language students. They stumble over verbs and trip over tenses, yet somehow have to get the point across, albeit a little rough around the edges.

Now what happens when people decide to sing in a second language? Does the meaning behind the lyrics still stay the same or does it get watered down in all the semantics? This would seem like a problem for May Wells, who has to sing in both English and French for The Garlics, a four-piece alternative rock band from Canada. Well, according to May, English is apparently a lot more meaningful and easier to get messages across.

"When I write in English it has more rhythm in it, it is easier to sing, it is more catchy, but you cannot go far when you sing in French."

The fact that she and the rest of the band grew up bilingual made the language transition from French to English substantially smoother. The other members are Olivier Mimeault on guitar, William G. Saulnier on bass, and JF Lamothe on drums.

"We have English lessons in high school and elementary school. There is a lot of English around us."

That sense of learning both French and English runs deep within the band. Even their name came from a translation of what one band member's mother called him when he had a haircut.

"It started with a haircut. When I was younger, I had a weird haircut and when it finished growing, my mother called me 'gousse' which is part of a garlic, and we kind of stick to it," says William.

However, there are some limitations to being bilingual though. For The Garlics who hail from Montreal, Quebec, which is a predominantly French province, there are some restrictions as to which languages get airtime on the radio.

"It's really hard because on the radio you can only play sixty percent Francophone and forty percent Anglophone. We can't really play in that French radio because we have to compete against Beyoncé and Lady Gaga, so it's really difficult. And it's really weird because in France they only have forty percent Francophone and sixty percent Anglophone, and we play in their hits on the radio in France. In Quebec, it's really about French things."

That in essence is the toughest part about being a band in this area. There's competition from francophone bands but also within the little portion of airtime for English. Because The Garlics are pretty much competing with Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, and every other top-forty artist on the charts, without that radio exposure, getting more fans outside of Canada becomes substantially more difficult.

Sure, the internet bases are covered, Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter, but in The Garlics' case, it boils down to the small things, those little details that make a band really stick out no matter how much money or publicity they get.

Since being together for a year and five months and having time to practice each week on top of daily chores, The Garlics try to perfect every song that they write, so none of that hit-or-miss stuff or pulling off a Weezer post-Pinkerton happens. Thus far, the songs they have been writing about are just the things they find in life. In their self-titled first EP which was released this past August, you'll find songs like "Goodbye", which is unsurprisingly about a break up.

"We put so much time on a song that we really want to make them perfect. You don't compose in one day and throw it away and record it one month later, we work each day, each practice on it."

Furthermore, May, the one who writes the lyrics, tries to put in a personal connection with each song, which makes it easier to sing about. In fact that personal connection runs so deep within a song that there's a joke in the band: "Don't do this or you'll end up in a song".

Many of these songs are played at Club Soda (they don't do covers surprisingly), another pay to play venue. It's a lot of work to get people to come though because the band is still relatively unknown. So they mostly end up relying on friends and family to come to their shows. So far, their hard work has paid off because some of their friends are the ones asking when the next show is and the number of fans in Quebec has increased. Thanks to the internet, The Garlics are also popular in places such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and the United States; however, getting them to attend a show in Canada is the tricky part even from a logistics standpoint.

In the end, the band hopes to turn music into a lifelong career. It is some high expectations considering the number of bands that actually make it and the number of bands that don't. They remain optimistic about everything though.

"You've got to sacrifice a lot of things when you start. Like in everything you do in life, you gotta start somewhere. It's the same thing in music. It'd be cool if we start at the top (but it's) too easy."

Making Music At Our Expense