by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

There’s something funny, and perhaps a bit sad, about an artist stage-named Jean-Luc Retard stating, “I want to be taken seriously.” Funnier and sadder still, though, is the legal ordeal that bassist Retard (Dan Crane to his mom) and his bandmates in what’s now …Nous Non Plus went through after the less-than-amicable breakup of the band’s previous incarnation, les Sans Culottes. Check out Crane’s recounting of the sordid affair at slate.com, Oct. 24, 2005, for all the gory details.

Frontman Clermont Ferrand, a lawyer by day, held on to the original name and intention—a snarky, faux-French celebration of ’60s Gallic pop—but the last laugh goes to Monsieur Retard, singer Verena “Celine Dijon” Weisendanger (the only authentic Française in the equation) and the rest of Ferrand’s mutinous crew, who headline a night at the Under the Snow mini-fest.

“Basically,” says la Dijonnaise, “the musicians are the same, so the songwriters are the same. Only one person is missing, and he was—I don’t know how much we want to talk about this, but he was kind of a negative force in the band, and didn’t allow us to be as expansive as we wanted to be. Jean-Luc can tell you that he was forbidden by Clermont Ferrand to sing more than one song per set. There were these weird, stupid little rules.”

The reincarnation process allowed them a few digs—the band name for one, taken from Serge Gainsbourg’s “Je t’aime… moi non plus,” and the spiteful if catchy number “Tant pis pour toi” on NNP’s self-titled debut disc. It also gave them a chance to expand their musical scope, drawing in glammy punk, sleazy disco (the heiress-baiting “One Night in Paris”), neo-synthpop, Côte d’Azur kitsch and even some really pretty chansons, no gag or punchline attached.

“That was a very deliberate shift on our part,” say le Retardé. “I’m a fairly serious musician, and it was always a struggle for me that people perceived les Sans Culottes as a novelty band. I didn’t want to be in a novelty band, and that’s part of the reason why I had issues with Clermont Ferrand. I want to have the element of humour, and for people to have fun, but I also want to be able to express some interesting ideas musically and lyrically, and be taken seriously, even if part of what we’re doing is intentionally comical.”

You’d think those straightforward French songs might be a harder sell to the largely unilingually-anglophone audience in the States, mais pas du tout.

“The songs that are most popular right now are French ones,” says Dijon. “I mean, ‘One Night in Paris’ is a total favourite, for many reasons, but ‘Lawnmower Boy’ is in French, and that’s one of the favourites of kids everywhere on the myspace, and people reviewing us. Also ‘Fille Atomique’—both are French, so that hasn’t been a barrier.”

“We’re fortunate to be part of a change in musical perception that’s going on,” adds Retard. “I don’t think we would have been number six on the U.S. college charts for two weeks, and in the top 10 for four, if it was that hard of a sell. My take on it is that people want to hear something that’s unique and new, and doesn’t sound like another Strokes or Libertines, something that establishes its own world—whether that world is in French or English.”

With le Nom and MC Gilles at Divan Orange on Friday, March 3, 9 p.m., $12

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