Petite Amie
Album: Petite Amie
Release Date: 2021
Mexico
Petite Amie is Carlos Medina’s (bassist in Little Jesus) Mexico City-based alternate project. In 2020, Carlos (guitar) was joined by Aline Terrein (vocals), Isabel Dosal (vocals), Santiago Fernández (bass), and Jacobo Velazquez (guitar) to create their first LP. [More]
Lyrics: Elektro
J’attendais le soir
Je cherchais une histoire
J’avais choisi la rue
Où nos rêves se sont battu
J’attendais le signal
Il n’y avait qu’une seule étoile
Je ne sais pas si on m’a vue
Mais ce soir, j’ai disparu
Tu ne m’as pas dit
Que les étoiles
Descendraient
Ce soir-là
Tu ne m’as pas dit
Que les étoiles
Nous emporteraient
Dans mon ciel
Il y a
L’essentiel
Mais je pense
À la mer
Tu ne m’as pas dit
Que les étoiles
Descendraient
Ce soir-là
Tu ne m’as pas dit
Que les étoiles
Nous emporteraient
Tracklist: Petite Amie
1. “Vraiment”
2. “El Delirio”
3. “Refugio”
4. “C’est Pas Moi”
5. “Desastre”
6. “Interludio“
7. “Elektro“
8. “Sumérgete“
9. “Post Punk”
10. “Reviens”
11. “Adiós”
Will you please introduce the band and tell us about your history?
Petite Amie is our psychedelic pop-rock band. We started making songs simply to make music and to have a good time with friends. However, after the first few times we got together for creative sessions, we realized that we felt we all shared the same spark. What started with a couple of songs in 2019, morphed into an album throughout 2020 and 2021.
Our songs bear witness to everything we lived even before we met, and of the ideas and emotions we shared while composing. Our lyrics are characterized by the expression of the existential angst generated by the search for the “self” in an increasingly impersonal world, where the line between what’s real and what’s virtual crystallizes. In this sense, our music fluctuates between different genres, based on psychedelic pop-rock. Our main influences include classics like the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and newer sounds such as Big Thief, Magic Potion, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, and Crumb.
Before I move on to our staff favorite song, Elektro, can I ask you what the French connection is? Why did you choose a French name as a Mexico City-based band?
Originally, we intended to make music exclusively in Spanish as it’s our mother tongue and we felt that there aren’t that many bands making psych-dream-pop-ish music in our language out there. However, when we tried to come up with melodies or lyrics for our songs, we found that, for some of them, Spanish felt a little clumsy, as sometimes you have to say a lot of words to express one single idea. So we started using French as a creative tool, just to not have to worry so much about what we were saying and simply focus on the melodies. In the end, we really liked our songs in French, so we just went with it. And that’s kind of why we ended up taking a name in French as well.
You totally nailed that French connection! How did this song come together?
For Elektro, we wanted to try and make a song that was dancy without it being particularly funky or disco, but we weren’t intentionally going for electro-pop (even though it landed so obviously on that genre, that that’s exactly what the song is called). We had this chord progression in mind from the start and we knew that the baseline had to be at the core of the song, but it didn’t really begin to take shape until we added a Dx7(synth) arp to the chorus, which somehow reminded us of some Gorillaz songs or the general vibe from the Plastic Beach album, so we got super excited.
And then we kind of hit a wall with the vocals. For a long time we couldn’t come up with a melody that we liked enough and it was actually one of those songs where we switched between languages to see which one captured the vibe we were going for better. In the end, the French lyrics gave it a “je ne sais quoi”, and it just worked perfectly. Now Elektro is one of our favorite songs from the album and we love to play it live!
What is Elektro about to go a bit deeper?
Elektro is a quest for something, although you don’t really know what that “something” might be. Imagine having a really good dream of going on an adventure, where the ultimate goal is fuzzy, but you go with it anyway and simply trust your feet to take you wherever you’re supposed to go. Or getting taken by really friendly aliens who take you on a tour of the galaxy. It’s a kind of journey into the unknown, in which every step is thrilling. However, despite the good times, we also wanted to express a certain nostalgia for the familiar and the idea that there is nothing like home.
You guys say you are a group of friends making music and having fun, and that seems to be so true when you see the video for Elektro. Will you give us some fun facts about the making of the video?
Ah, “the making of Elektro”… Well for starters it took us a while to agree on what we wanted the video to be like, but we always knew that it had to portray Betito (the main character of the video) walking/dancing aimlessly and running into us at some point. However, we didn’t even have a location up until about a week before we had to film the video. And it wasn’t until the moment that we started filming that the idea of the video actually became clear to us (thanks to Alejandra Villalba and Santiago Padilla, the director and the photographer of the video).
Overall, the day we filmed Elektro was very special for us, as we had just received the mastered version of the album and we all got together that day to eat and celebrate that we could finally say that our album was done. After listening to the album from beginning to end, we grabbed our stuff and headed to the location to film the video. We feel that you can really catch that festive mood at the end of the video when Betito finds us and we all dance together.
However, despite the good times, we also wanted to express a certain nostalgia for the familiar and the idea that there is nothing like home.
Petite Amie on Elektro
How does Mexico City feed your music? Coming from a big (and chaotic) city myself, I feel like it somehow forces you to be more expressive anyway. Please tell us some personal Mexico City details that you think inspired your character over the years. (A street sign, a small store, a smell, etc etc etc)
Wow, this is a very good question! We always get inspired by Mexico City: The food is crazy delicious; every corner is always bustling with life; our studio is located in a very old part of the city that is surrounded by jacarandas, which are Japanese trees that grow beautiful purple flowers in the spring. But mainly, Mexico City is so huge and chaotic, that we kind of feel really small living in it. Sometimes, we’ll be at a rooftop looking around and all you’ll see on every horizon is a city that gets larger by the minute. In those moments, it’s kind of unavoidable to wonder why we’re here at all. It’s both thrilling and consuming at the same time.
That’s why we also like to get out of the city when we can. We especially love going to this small town called Valle de Bravo. It’s a classic Mexican town surrounding a lake, about an hour and a half away from Mexico City. When we’re there, everything seems to slow down. The mornings are quiet, we drink coffee. You can smell the forest. Someone will grab a guitar and we’ll start singing along to our favorite songs. We’ll realize that we forgot some important piece of equipment back home, laugh about how this always happens and figure out how to get by without it. We choose a song to work on and get busy.
I know that the city has a prestigious music scene, will you also share some secret Mexico City gems with us?
Mexico City is a crazy place, thousands of different genres are popping up around the city all the time. We have great musicians all over the country. It is nice to be here because the different music scenes are always growing and people love to go out and see new acts and listen to different types of music.
As for the gems in Mexico City, Santiago and Carlos used to play in a late 2010’s indie rock band that was called Los Plastics Revolution.
We love the noise-punk scene that’s going on led by a great band called Los Blenders. This got so big that many bands from all over the country are making psychedelic punk music like Margaritas Podridas and Señor Kino.
What’s next for Petite Amie? Do you have a date for your second LP, yet? What are your goals for 2022 and beyond?
We are trying to balance our two main goals for this year: playing live shows and releasing new music. We don’t have an exact date yet, but we have a couple of singles that will see the light of the day at some point, before releasing our second album, hopefully by the beginning of 2023. We are also focusing on getting the live shows running and trying to play wherever we’re invited. We’d really like to play in cities across Mexico and, if it’s possible, maybe a couple of shows abroad as well.
