by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

The jacket photo for Négresse blanche, the latest album by Parisian popster for consenting adults Arthur H, won't dismiss his rep as Serge Gainsbourg reborn. It shows a stern-faced Monsieur H crouched before a nude (white) woman, breast bared if head out of frame. But there's nuance to this display of Gallic carnality. The album strives to get into women's heads more than their panties, adopting female voices and viewpoints. Moreover, the album itself is comparatively naked, stripped of the world-beat spices and quasi-retro music hall scents that marked his earlier works. Okay, so it's not quite as bare-all as his precedent joint Piano Solo, but Négresse blanche was recorded chez lui, provoking a new sense of intimacy. The Mirror got the gravel-voiced Arthur H on the horn for a few bons mots.

Mirror: I'd like to start with the title Négresse blanche. I laughed at first, because it's a bit scandalous, and I also noted the tone of cosmopolitan eroticism of it, but it also got me thinking of the song "Woman Is the Nigger of the World" by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Arthur H: Yes, I don't know that phrase, but I think it's right. As for the title, it must be said that it really can't be translated to English, because the word doesn't have at all the same meaning, the same weight. In French, it's really very poetic, it carries no negative charge. In English, it has an enormous negative charge. My friends are principally female, and they're all mixed to one degree or another - without exception, in fact. True, France has already been a country of mixing, of immigration, so either their parents come from all over the world, or they're mixed in their heart and souls. And I feel like that too, sometimes, myself. I feel very French sometimes, and at others not at all French. I think that we are, today, condemned to imagine a new identity, a considerable and at times perturbing extension of our sensibilities.

M: A post-national or post-ethnic sensibility?

AH: Yes, but what I find interesting in the people I see is that it's not intellectual. It's truly physical, instinctive and intuitive. It's not like, oh, I went to Africa, it was super. No, it's maybe about finding, thanks to others, even strangers, something that we have lost.

All the ladies in the house

M: There's a very feminine aspect to Négresse blanche - most of your characters here are women.

AH: Yes, oh yes. I think it's a question of distance. I'm a man, not a woman. The woman is foreign to me, there's a distance there that's full of unknowns and desires.

M: Your song "La légion étrange" is a challenge to men to finally drop their armour and surrender to love and intimacy. It's a rather serious challenge, considering the vast gulf that exists between men and women. We seem to speak two different languages, and meeting each other halfway is a tough job that both parties have to throw themselves into.

AH: Yes, we live in a very uncertain era. All the landmarks were more or less dynamited during the '60s and '70s. There are only scraps left over. The idealized image of the couple is no longer a reality, so we have to imagine relationships that are different, but that work. It's really very, very difficult. It's possible, but quasi-impossible. So that song, unfortunately, is relatively autobiographical (laughs). It's about kicking yourself in the ass and not being afraid of love. Before, things were more spontaneous. Now, we need to have a hell of a lot of information - it takes a lot more knowledge. And to be able to forget oneself, let oneself go and no longer think of possessing the other, that takes a hell of a lot of work.

M: I found that the songs on this record, unlike your previous ones, present themselves without costumes or makeup - meaning, the touches of nostalgia and exoticism aren't really there.

AH: I'd always had notions of doing songs like that, very simple. My band and I discussed this and said, we should do a pop record in the good sense of the term. In the end, we arrived at something nonetheless sophisticated with lots of colour and detailing. I have a hard time finding my own simplicity, so I seek it actively (laughs) somewhere in the corner, under a chest of drawers, I don't know.

Whack Jacques Chirac

M: My favourite song on the album is "14 juillet 2002" [about Maxime Brunerie, the far-right skinhead who tried to assassinate French PM Jacques Chirac last year] which I find, considering the feminine leaning of the record - I wouldn't say the pariah song of the record, but somewhat at odds. Not entirely inappropriate, considering the subject.

AH: It really stunned me that, the day before the assassination attempt, he sent an e-mail to his far-right friends in England, saying, "Look at the TV tomorrow, I will be a star." I found that loony, because the motivation and logic were secondary. It seems he just wanted to impress his pals and his girlfriend by doing something incredible and appearing on TV. So in that sense, he's a very modern young man, very representative of an image-obsessed society. He's someone who felt he could exist only in the context of the view of others, doing whatever, eventually trying to kill the president of the republic. I was also stunned by his capacity to turn his own life into hell, into chaos. Because obviously it didn't work and he ended up in jail. With him it was on a, shall we say, industrial level, but on a home-made level, I think everyone has the capacity to transform their life into hell - or paradise. Look, this is an idle, directionless young man who was, in a sense, touching. He had a certain courage, even if it was completely vain and morbid.

With Camille at le Spectrum on Friday, August 1, 7pm, $34.50

>> Music Listings