Rock French at last
American inspired folk-rock for the music and French lyrical
madness for the words, there is no other group quite like Dionysos on stage.
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With the successes of Noir Désir and Louise Attaque, French rock has at last found its way. Since the first few years of the 21st century, lots of unexpected experiments have been bringing a constant stream of new features to a very exciting scene.
Where least expected
Literary lyricism and visceral rock
A long time ago, John Lennon put the issue in a nutshell in one cutting remark, " French rock is like English wine." In 2007, forty years after the release of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper, France may still seem to be making its first faltering attempts at rock, especially with the flood of rock coming out of the smart suburbs embodied by teenage groups such as Naast, Second Sex and Les Plastiscines, seeking to combine the arrogance of snobbish young Parisians of the 1960s with the electrifying energy of the Anglo-American rock of the same period.
The most critical commentators take the view that even after having made some impressive conquests of other countries with electronic music and the famous "French Touch" [see article on electronic music], France is falling back on its eternal complexes about rock instead of cultivating its difference.
Where least expected
Unless, like everywhere in the world, you consider rock to be a generic term embracing all forms of popular music. If you do, the best French rock is undoubtedly to be found where you’d least expect it, on the now more open and celebrated electronic music scene, with groups such as Phoenix and Air. The first, authors of three albums that oscillate between ultra-melodic pop inspired by 1970s America and an elegant rock reminiscent of The Strokes, have managed to heave themselves up onto the international stage, where their French origins are entirely obscured.
The same is true of the duo Air, which belongs to the same sphere, and whose albums and various parallel projects (film and ballet music) achieve a kind of universality that makes them the descendants of both Serge Gainsbourg - especially since they composed and produced the album of his daughter Charlotte in 2006 [see Label France No. 65] - and Pink Floyd.
To a lesser degree, another duo named Aaron, which has just sold over 100,000 copies its first album in the wake of an unexpected hit with the single U-Turn (Lili), comes from a similar blurring of identity by flirting with trip hop.
A last duo, this time mixed, Cocoon offers a pared-down folk pop, also in English, which won them the much coveted prize in the "Ceux qu’il faut découvrir" [must-see new faces] (CQFD) contest organised every year by the magazine Les Inrockuptibles [see box in the internet version].
The Aaron duo.
Literary lyricism and visceral rock
However, the most solid and durable of French rock styles is still the one whose origins go back to Noir Désir, in other words to the encounter, not to say sometimes collision, of a somewhat literary and lyrical phrasing with the renewable energies of rock, folk and punk.
The group Luke, whose fully amplified second album (La Tête en arrière, 2004) sold 200,000 copies in France, is of the same lineage. On tour in 2006 with a group with which they are friends, Deportivo, whose first album was also a great hit, both line-ups demonstrated that a visceral French rock might exist that has got past post-teenage rebellion and displays an unpretentious and genuine presence on stage.
Mademoiselle K.
The stage, on which they jump about like an army of crazed springs, is also the preferred place of Dionysos - a French group unrivalled in their live performance - for making the most of the already boisterous songs on their albums. It’s American-inspired folk rock, but nourished at root by a touch of poetic lunacy like something written by Raymond Queneau.
More realistic and at the same time more utopian, Mickey 3D’s lyrics benefit from a musical dynamic that astutely combines the excitability of rock and pop lighting with the traditional rigour of French chanson.
When it comes to the girls, while Rita Mitsouko, a leading group of the 1980s led by Catherine Ringer, is getting back in business, rock emancipation is definitely with us, with the radiant Grande Sophie (Et si c’était moi, 2004) or the edgy Mademoiselle K (Ça me vexe, 2006). Two liberated women, more up for leading than for following, whose approach is inspired respectively by Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders) and PJ Harvey.
In the ranks of solo artists, Benjamin Biolay, associated too hastily with new French song (for his inspired collaborations with Keren Ann, Henri Salvador and Françoise Hardy), is establishing a form of sophisticated rock that draws its inspiration as much from Gainsbourg as from the synthetic new wave of pioneers of the genre in France, Taxi-Girl. On his two latest albums (À l’origine, 2005 and Trash yéyé, due for release in September 2007) are some hip hop inflections perfectly integrated with his writing. He could prove John Lennon wrong all by himself.
Christophe Conte
Journalist on the arts weekly Les Inrockuptibles
The groups Luke and Deportivo together on stage.
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