Montréal-based art punk quintet La Sécurité features a collection of current and past members of Choses Sauvages, Laurence-Anne, Silver Dapple, DATES, Pressure Pin, and others. Since their formation back in 2022, the French Canadian quintet developed a sound and approach that meanders around the fringes of punk, New Wave and krautrock paired with jumpy beats, off-kilter arrangements and minimalistic yet melodic hooks, seemingly run through an insomniac filter.
While their music is razor sharp and danceable, their lyrical content is rooted in the feminist community-centric ethos of the Riot Grrrl movement. “It’s not just fun and games… it also bites. It’s catchy earworms delivered with a punk attitude,” guitarist Melissa Di Menna says.
With the release of 2023’s Samuel Gemme-produced Stay Safe!, La Sécurité exploded into the national and international scenes, supporting the album with a busy period of touring with stops across the North American festival circuit, including M for Montréal, New Colossus and SXSW among others, as well as opening for The Go! Team.
Late last year, the JOVM mainstays shared “Detour,” a joint release with beloved indie label Bella Union and their label home Mothland. “Detour” continued where Stay Safe! let off: motorik grooves paired with spiky, off kilter arrangements and minimalistic melodic hooks that bring a synthesis of DEVO and the B52s to mind.
The Canadian outfit starts off 2025 with “Ketchup,” a breakneck post-punk ripper anchored around dizzying synth arpeggios and a distorted, down-tuned bass line paired with the JOVM mainstays’ uncanny knack for punchy, shout-along friendly hooks that continues a run of material that seemingly draws from Freedom of Choice-era DEVO.
The verses are coupled with a chord change that helps build the collective’s compelling case against small talk. And while the song isn’t about condiments; instead it sarcastically alludes to ketchup with the line “L’affaire est ketchup,” a Québécois expression meaning: “All is well.”
“Though we knew we wanted to write a song about small talk, when we started working on the music, I was mostly scat singing, save for the words ‘L’affaire est ketchup.’ Hence, the song title,” La Sécurité’s frontperson Éliane Viens-Synnott says. “We noticed while playing the song live, that the tune got people bouncing all over the place. The track seems to have that special energy. To keep that energy, Renny [Wilson] went all out with the production. To be fair, we did suggest that he made every track ‘clip.’”
Philippe Beauséjour, who directed the accompanying video, explains, “Upon listening to the song, I noticed that it was about small talk, and all these subjects that come up in conversation when we have nothing to say. These empty conversations are often about what ‘normal’ people see on television (weather forecast, news, funny ads…). The papercutting animations stem from my love for Terry Gilliam’s work.”