Clash Music

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery in everything but the music business, where it generally means that you’ve just missed out on a big wad of cash. Marc Collin, for instance, the man behind Nouvelle Vague, is fuming gently that the current TV ad for a big multi-national company is soundtracked by a winsome girl singer covering an old new-wave song.

“It’s very near, but it’s not us,” sighs the man who thought he’d cornered the market in winsome girl singers covering new-wave songs. “We’ve not done so many ads. Maybe two or three in France, two or three in England, one in America…”

Still, that isn’t bad going for what is, essentially, a novelty project made good. The cream of early-Eighties post-punk performed by a series of gamine ingénues in a bossa nova style, Nouvelle Vague probably wouldn’t work if Collin weren’t French, but that helps, somehow. He’s now onto his second album, ‘Bande à Part’, after the self-titled debut became a cult hit over here, then the States. The ad royalties were just an added bonus.

While generally described as either a collective or a duo, Nouvelle Vague is really Collin’s baby, and quite a departure from his usual output. The Paris-based producer was part of the fertile French Touch movement in the late Eighties, which also spawned the likes of Air and Alex Gopher, and went on to become a major player on the influential Parisian club scene. He then dabbled in film scores, wrote and produced tracks for the likes of Beth Hirsch, but now finds his schedule dominated by a side project.

The roots of the idea would appear to be in language - ‘Nouvelle Vague’ and ‘bossa nova’ are both translations of ‘new-wave,’ in French and Portugese respectively - but Collin insists that’s just an odd coincidence. In fact, as a huge fan of post-punk, his prime objective was to prove how strong those old tunes were, by placing them in the unlikeliest of settings.

“All these post-punk bands, maybe they only knew one or two chords but they also wrote beautiful songs. No one ever says that, as they are talking about the haircuts, the attitude. When we did the first album, I thought if we could touch all the people that were into post-punk, that would be a good thing. I didn’t expect that a younger generation, especially in America, would really like it. They only know one or two of the original songs, and I don’t think they went back to hear the originals after. They just love the way we are doing the music.”

Guitarist Olivier Libaux was Collin’s chief collaborator on both Nouvelle Vague records, closely followed by a clutch of talented young French vocalists. These were selected partly for their sensuous, very un-snotty voices, but also because they’d never heard the original songs either. Even they weren’t particularly interested in going back to the source, after recording was complete. “I think it’s a bit strange,” says Collin. “But when you know a song you don’t want to know that it’s a cover. The first time I heard the original of ‘Tainted Love’ I went ‘Gaah!’ as I really thought it was a Soft Cell song. I was very confused.”

With a marketing budget as minimal as the album’s acoustic instrumentation, it was good old-fashioned word of mouth that spread the Nouvelle Vague sound, and sales of the first album have passed the 200,000 mark now. You can understand its appeal, certainly for those who remembered the songs from their initial incarnation, but have perhaps relaxed a tad these days. Edgy old classics in an easy-listening style, it became just about the perfect wine bar record.

Collin is faintly appalled by that suggestion though, and for this second album planned a radical change of tack, adding more electronics and a darker edge. He then had a change of heart, however, after some gentle persuasion from pretty much everyone he knew, and returned to the original blueprint. Hence ‘Bande à Part’ is still very Nouvelle Vague: 14 more new-wave anthems, from Echo and the Bunnymen’s ‘The Killing Moon’ to Blancmange’s ‘Waves’, all given a quasi-Brazilian or cod-Caribbean makeover, with just the occasional deviation from the laissez faire norm. Then, of course, you notice the lyrics…

“What’s strange with Nouvelle Vague, you can consider that it’s chill-out, easy listening, but if you listen carefully its not the case,” says Collin. “If you take [The Clash’s] ‘Guns Of Brixton’ on the first album or on this one [Bauhaus’s] ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’, it’s very dark. If people want to listen to those songs in a swimming pool with a cocktail, it will not work at all.”

That depends, of course, on the cocktail. Collin and co will be getting well acquainted with hotel pools soon as they head to the UK, Europe and the States on tour. On stage, again, the atmosphere will be fairly sedate, no obtrusive axe solos or random hip-hop interludes to spoil the mood. So has he come across any of the original artists on his travels, and what do they make of him turning their angry young anthems all light and sunny?

“We met Mick Jones in Sweden, he was very happy. We met Neville Staples from The Specials in Seattle, he was happy also. We got feedback from Martin Gore and Vince Clarke [Depeche Mode], the guy from the Dead Kennedys. But I heard that Peter Hook, of Joy Division, when he heard our version of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, he didn’t recognise it.”

Well, he is getting on a bit.

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