It took Camille 15 years to make her new album. The Sound of Milk is a triple record, each part documenting a distinct stage of the French musician\u2019s experience raising two kids with composer Cl\u00e9ment Ducol: Naissance is from 2015, Enfance 2020 and Adolescence 2025. She could have put each one out when it was complete, she says, but realised she wasn\u2019t ready. Her son and daughter, now teenagers, \u201cwere too little, and I would have felt too exposed to talk about it because it\u2019s about beauty, joy, it\u2019s very deep,\u201d says Camille, calling from her home in the French countryside. \u201cI needed to be able to step back and look at the journey. I needed to feel grounded enough to release it in a world that does not respect children and mothers.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the surface, much of Camille\u2019s sixth album may sound very sweet. Naissance features no real instruments \u2013 it\u2019s essentially a field recording of raising babies, all gurgles and found sound. Known for her vocal experimentation \u2013 beatboxing, raspberries \u2013 Camille saw it as a manifesto freeing singing from how disembodied it can be in pop. \u201cAs a woman, music is about a way of living,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s about breathing, being with my kids, singing along with what\u2019s going on around me in an open world.\u201d She calls Enfance a \u201cpocket musical\u201d: similarly atmospheric, it\u2019s full of the kinds of ditties parents make up when they\u2019re teaching kids about stairs and the washing machine \u2013 raising everyday maternal expressions up as art, I suggest. \u201cI like what you\u2019re saying,\u201d she says. \u201cAll families are pieces of art. We create our values, our worlds, a way of talking to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
double quotation markYou can feel like you\u2019re making soldiers for the world \u2013 and if they\u2019re not soldiers, they can get bombed<\/p>\n
Only the fully produced Adolescence is in keeping with the idiosyncratic, frisky pop catalogue Camille has built since 2002, one that has threaded together drone, cabaret, bodily percussion and ecclesiastical reveries, along with tracks for the animations Ratatouille and Le Petit Prince, songs about how sperm eventually becomes milk, and Oscar-winning songs for the soundtrack to Jacques Audiard\u2019s 2024 film Emilia P\u00e9rez.<\/p>\n
Threading soundtracks with frisky pop \u2026 at the Ratatouille premiere in 2007. Photograph: Pool BENHAMOU\/SOULOY\/Gamma-Rapho\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Now 48, Camille exists in conversation with artists such as Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson and David Byrne, as much for their musical and conceptual innovations as the humour they bring to them. Adolescence is the most overtly politicised part of The Sound of Milk, with songs about ecological collapse, disrespect for future generations and screen-mediated myopia, but there\u2019s a defiance to the whole record: joy in the face of darkness, foregrounding the maternal experience \u2013 and her own difficult family history \u2013 in a world that would rather sideline it.<\/p>\n
Camille is rousing, emphatic company on the topic. She had to fight to make the album this way. \u201cYou know,\u201d she says, \u201cit took a lot of time to convince my label\u201d \u2013 Because, also home to Charlotte Gainsbourg \u2013 \u201cthat this could be a record, because these songs are considered mother\u2019s things: \u2018This should stay in your house. Do proper songs, radio songs, in the studio.\u2019 But these are songs. This is my life, and this\u201d \u2013 mothering \u2013 \u201cis making the world go around, guys, because this is where we all come from, and if nobody sings to us when we\u2019re little, if nobody\u2019s creating for us, then we\u2019re dying.\u201d<\/p>\n
I confess that the first time I listened, the sing-songy vignettes of family life made me cringe, then I checked myself: even as someone who loves kids and my mum friends, clearly I still carry internalised misogyny about how women can express themselves and be taken seriously. \u201cIt\u2019s provocative,\u201d she agrees. \u201cI completely understand what you\u2019re saying and I really appreciate you telling me that because I think lots of people are going to feel that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
At first, so did she. Some internal voice told her that she shouldn\u2019t be turning her family recordings into music: \u201cThis is my private life, this is not commercial, this is not art; it\u2019s too joyful.\u201d It felt \u201ccucul\u201d \u2013 sappy. \u201cThen I realised: no, this is internalised misogyny, and it\u2019s the worst misogyny because you believe you shouldn\u2019t be there.\u201d Her minimalist 2011 album Ilo Veyou dealt in part with her first pregnancy, so she thought she shouldn\u2019t make another one in that vein: \u201c\u2018I\u2019m not going to go on about motherhood.\u2019 Then I thought, \u2018But I\u2019ll always be about that. I\u2019ll always be a mother \u2013 I can make 10 records about motherhood.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Oscar glory \u2026 with Emilia P\u00e9rez director Jacques Audiard, left, and husband Cl\u00e9ment Ducol. Photograph: John Salangsang\/BEI\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
People keep likening The Sound of Milk to Richard Linklater\u2019s similarly childhood-spanning film Boyhood but Camille hasn\u2019t seen it; she writes it down to remind herself. The Sound of Milk contains its own kind of time travel. A few songs appear across the record in different incarnations; Monsieur Gar\u00e7on, from Adolescence, contrasts visions of her teenage son with his toddler self. That aspect of parenthood, says Camille, is \u201chow would you say, hallucinatory? It\u2019s mystical.\u201d The album, she says, is about \u201cthat vertigo, that wonder at the miracle of life\u201d.<\/p>\n
She has short shrift for those who degrade it. She brings up president Fran\u00e7ois Macron calling in 2024 for \u201cle r\u00e9armement d\u00e9mographique\u201d \u2013 literally rearming the population to counter waning birthrates. \u201cYou can feel like you\u2019re making soldiers for the world, and if they\u2019re not soldiers, they can get bombed, because children and mothers and families can be bombed in this world,\u201d she says, reminding me of K\u00e4the Kollwitz\u2019s pacifist works<\/a>.<\/p>\n That approach doesn\u2019t address the structural causes behind the issue: \u201cMothers deliver then they\u2019re asked to be efficient the next day, month or three months after. This is now what life is about.\u201d The Sound of Milk stands for \u201ctime, for joy, for what happens when you have time with your children.\u201d She intentionally left out the tough parts of parenting. \u201cToday, joy has become a taboo. It\u2019s irritating. We don\u2019t want to hear about it, it\u2019s like it\u2019s in the way. It\u2019s like ecology \u2013 oh, this is a luxury. Come on guys, let\u2019s rearm the population and talk about wars and real problems.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markTo fight depression you need joy. This\u00a0is why I sing<\/p>\n