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Brittany spearhead >> The nouvelle chanson of Yann Tiersen
by CHRIS YURKIW Photo by Philippe Lebruman
We're talking French internal affairs here; not anglo-international crossovers like DJs Daft Punk, Dimitri From Paris or Kid Loco, but French rock--mocked over the years for being oxymoronic to nonexistent. French rock does exist, or did, especially from the late '80s when the "alterno" wave crashed on the Gallic side of the Channel (see: Bérurier Noir, OTH...). It waned in the early '90s until a handful of unassuming types from Atlantic ports like Nantes and Brest started to get picked out of the crowd. There was Dominique A., who plays a minimalist, almost lo-fi rock but manages to get compared to Jacques Brel. There was the label he records for, Lithium, originally based in Nantes, which signed idiosyncratic indie bands but also artists who weren't afraid to flirt with the stereotypically French accordion. And now there's Yann Tiersen: born in Brest, raised in Rennes (the capital of Brittany), and a rising star in Paris since he moved there eight years ago at 22. The only problem with lumping Tiersen in with other practitioners of what's getting called "la nouvelle chanson française" is that he doesn't sing. That much. Actually, he's integrating his own voice more and more into his one-man l'homme orchestre (his main instruments are piano and violin, but he's also partial to the accordion, mandolin, toy piano and typewriter), wherein he performs a generally subdued but hyper-diverse music that can recall Michael Nyman or Nino Rota, Érik Satie (who also liked to write music for typewriter) or Momus (also a big Brel fan). But what does all this "nouvelle chanson" business have to do with rock, really? "The form of my music might not be very rock, but that was the culture I grew up in," says Tiersen from his apartment in Paris. "It was being in rock bands that made me want to write songs. And I think that my desire to do music, and the energy I put into it, has more to do with rock than other things, like classical music or soundtrack music." Tiersen was classically trained, and his third and breakthrough album, Le Phare, does come off as a kind of chanson sans mots, even venturing into the Celtic reel tradition of Brittany. But his brand new follow-up, a mini-album entitled Tout est calme, veers toward the guitar and the electric, and his previous, largely solitary efforts are augmented by compagnon de route Christian Quermalet and vocalist Claire Pichet, both of whom will accompany Tiersen at his FrancoFolies shows--his very first outside of France, Belgium and Switzerland. You listen to it and you start to believe Tiersen's stated influences of things like Palace and Catpower, and disbelieve the geographic hype. "I don't know if there's any link [between the music] and a certain region," says Yann, "and I really don't know if the 'minimalist' tag applies to so many people. But yeah, there might be a certain approach to the music, a certain restraint or sobriety."
At Le Monument National (1182 St-Laurent) this Wednesday and Thursday, August 4-5, 7pm, $16.50 |
It would be a little too facile to say that a loose group of artists from the northwest of France is reinvigorating the French rock scene--just like a bunch of bands from the northwest States did in the U.S. some years ago. But what the hell.