Nouvelle Vague - Nouvelle Vague

...why you'd say yes... but Nouvelle Vague's self-titled album is something else entirely.

It looks fairly unassuming from the front cover - I have to say I ignored it for a time, in the assumption it was some kind of under-marketed third rate album of dance remixes or somesuch. It's simplistic and stylised: a purple background with a high-relief depiction of a sixties-looking girl, all arrogantly raised chin and half-closed eyes - the ...
...of the genius of the Nouvelle Vague project - that it takes familiar things and reworks them. When I first heard this, it took me much longer than it should have as a good Joy Division fan, to realise that the first track was a cover of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' and stop work to listen incredulously. Some might consider it folly - sacrilege even - to record what was such a definitive, excellent song by such a troubled and gifted songwriter, but for ... more

Knowing that in Britain, any semblance of a 'summer' we are graced with won't last long, we don't hesitate to spring into action, readying ourselves for the season at the first glimmer of sunshine after what seems like years of gloomy April showers. We dig out the flip flops and sunhats; we load our shopping trolleys with barbecue sauce and ice cream. Every girl in the land invests in fifty packets of clear sticking plasters to cover the sandal-induced blisters emblazoned on her feet. Every man reminds you how horrendously hairy their legs are by displaying them in inappropriate shorts. Everyone you meet looks strangely embarrassed, their cheeks glowing red in an obvious demonstration of what hapens when you forget to put the sunscreen on your face too...

Ah, it's a wonderful time of year.

For myself, and for many others, another essential rite of summer involves picking our summer listening. My personal choice at such a time usually leads me in one of two directions - exuberant guitar pop of the kind you can blast out the car windows as you drive to the beach (you wish) or to Tesco (more likely); or gentle rocksteady reggae, perfect for lounging in the backyard and pretending you're patronising a shoreline in Jamaica (you wish).

And then early last year, I discovered a whole new third option - and the phrase 'whole new' is not used lightly there, because 'Nouvelle Vague' is not the kind of music one comes across every day.

First, you must imagine two French guys named Marc and Olivier. They both play lots of different musical instruments and like producing music. They are also men of a certain age - that is, they were young and wide-eyed when punk first came around in 1977, and although their tastes have moved on since, they never quite got over it. Now imagine they have rounded up a small gang of beautiful, disdainful French girls who all happen to be singers. They start jamming bossa nova tracks and they get one singer to sing along to each track.

I personally quite like it when people do strange cover versions of other people's songs, but I can see why some don't. It can be seen as lazy, or derivative, or too clever for its own good. It can also just be a plain and simple case of some talentless whippersnapper taking a song you love and earnestly murdering it for no good reason - and that's kind of irritating. In the twenty-first century, when all Hollywood does is remake classic films and TV series and all the music industry does is keep stuffing yodelsome identikit rent-a-bods of both sexes into our expectant faces, it seems like we never come up with something new in any aspect of culture, and an album of cover versions is surely a part of that... Isn't it?

I can see why you'd say yes... but Nouvelle Vague's self-titled album is something else entirely.

It looks fairly unassuming from the front cover - I have to say I ignored it for a time, in the assumption it was some kind of under-marketed third rate album of dance remixes or somesuch. It's simplistic and stylised: a purple background with a high-relief depiction of a sixties-looking girl, all arrogantly raised chin and half-closed eyes - the imperious elegance of the archetypal French siren, I suppose. Other than that and the almost illegible-at-first-glance name of the band, the cover gives very little away - though I did notice in my guise as highly-observant record shop assistant that at one stage the record company helpfully added marketing stickers, as they are wont to do, informing the general public that yes, this DID feature THAT song from THAT mobile phone ad (which I will come to later).

Although we sell a lot of it in the shop, I've never been especially enamoured with bossa nova and latin music in general - it all seems much of a muchness to me. This, I think is part of the genius of the Nouvelle Vague project - that it takes familiar things and reworks them. When I first heard this, it took me much longer than it should have as a good Joy Division fan, to realise that the first track was a cover of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' and stop work to listen incredulously. Some might consider it folly - sacrilege even - to record what was such a definitive, excellent song by such a troubled and gifted songwriter, but for some reason it works. It starts with the sound effect of a wave rolling in on the shore and children laughing in the distance, before the gentle finger-picking of an accoustic guitar takes on the beat, accompanied by a gentle shaker beat and then the lazily sliding, indistinctly phrased voice of Eloisia, their first chosen singer. The loungey beat and glockenspeil-ed melody should make it sound cheap and tacky, but somehow it seems like an understated tribute that nods to the original without debasing it.

From this gentle opening, the next track explodes in drumbeats and frantic guitar chords with a kinetic bassline pumping underneath, lending a massive exuberant energy to what was lacking in its original, electronics-laden version by Depeche Mode. It skips along joyously, its "do-do-do-do-do" chorus overlaid with a mischievous playfulness it never had before, and its middle breakdown with jungley whistles underlining the sense of humour that is evident alongside the sense of gravitas with which these songs have been chosen and treated.

Track four is a personal highlight for me, originally performed by one of my favourite bands and uncharacteristically written and sung by their bass player rather than either of their usual singer-songwriter-guitarists. Paul Simonon was probably the only white kid in his school in London whilst growing up, and one of the things he later brought with him when he joined all-time punk heroes the Clash was an abiding love of reggae, as well as deeply-rooted loyalties to the black community he came from and a grim understanding of the racial prejudices they faced. Even on their classic album 'London Calling', his track 'Guns of Brixton' is a stand-out moment, ominous and full of inarticulate rage - on 'Nouvelle Vague' it's absolutely electrifying. Its vocals are provided by acclaimed French solo artist Camille, who is sultry and airy one minute, breathily wry the next, lending an air of aching melancholy to the lines "Shot down on the pavement/ Waiting on Death Row" and a nonchalant but steely reserve to "You can crush us/ You can bruise us/ But you'll have to answer to/ Oh, the Guns of Brixton". The understated guitar work and sense of foreboding conjured up when the bass part kicks in after the first chorus are something that still sends shivers up my spine when I hear it, in a way which defies that pedantic logic that claims you can't interpret a song as a singer unless you've experienced it yourself - for I doubt Camille was hanging around the streets of Paris last time there was a race riot going on.

The essence of this project seems to be the way in which each song has uncovered a new angle of the original piece, putting it into an entirely new context. Were you to listen to former Sex Pistol John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) manically shrieking the lyrics to '(This is Not a) Love Song' on Public Image's initial cut of the track, you'd never guess you could turn it from a kind of rant about capitalism into something smoky and seductive with a languid cha-cha-cha beat and a muted brass section in the interlude. The Dead Kennedys, another punk favourite who tended towards shock tactics to get their political (and otherwise) points across, here have their screechingly crude anthem "Too Drunk to F***" turned into a bottom-wiggling salsa revue with its tongue lodged firmly in its cheek by a giggling Camille. Alex's vocal on the Sisters of Mercy's "Marian" makes it sound like some surgeingly beautiful ballad sung by an ethereal child rather an industrial tinged goth-rock track, and perennial heartwarmer "Teenage Kicks" by the Undertones gets an overhaul that, while not in any way surpassing the classic first recording, still highlights the plaintiveness of the feelings it talks about in a way the original did not. The afore-mentioned "song from the mobile ad", Nouvelle Vague's cover version of 'Melt With You', is a sweet effort though not one of my favourites on the album, and it's T-Mobile TV ubiquity for a few weeks undoubtedly introduced a few extra people to this album, for which I suppose I'm grateful.

The most noticeable transformation though, in my opinion, occurs on tracks eight and thirteen, both of which are treated in a way that completely opens up a whole new dimension to the original song. XTC's "Making Plans for Nigel" was, in their hands, a hard-driven song, slamming with relentless drum beats, and a little soul-less even though it was still great. Nouvelle Vague make it wistful and gorgeous enough to move you almost to tears; the guitar lilting gently through a melody you always found compelling but never realised was sad, and the reaffirmation that "If young Nigel says he's happy,/ He must be happy" rendered so melancholic that you really feel for the poor guy, whatever it is they're planning for him in his future in British Steel. The closing refrain by the guitar and keyboard is worthy of scoring some heartbreaking lovers' goodbye in a bittersweet teen movie, so poignant does it become in the hands of these multi-instrumentalists.

And if XTC can be made romantic and sad, then the last track of the album is absolutely unrecognisable. Originally a strangely happy-go-lucky ska-styled B-side for two-tone punk fellow-me-lads The Specials, it was a throwaway and amusing tale of a typically British night out - a kind of cleaner version of the Young Ones. Given to the French, however, 'Friday Night Saturday Morning' becomes haunting and tragic in the most beautiful way you could imagine, exposing the loneliness and folly of going out, trying to pull and drinking too much. The voice is warm but distant and the quietly wailing background tones of what sounds like a theremin makes it all sound quite incredible, like a chillout track at a party in heaven (the Christian-credited home of God, not the London club). Those of you who know and love the original will be amazed by the cover - as with '...Nigel', the placing of the song in a new context throws light on a whole new meaning you never dreamed was there, and makes you appreciate both versions all the more.

As a movement and a time for music, punk was vital and exciting and meant massive things to people, and it's still cherished dearly even by those like myself who weren't even born when it first began. New Wave was similarly tied to ideas and culture in a way that meant it permeated people's lives to become more than just the music they listened to, and every track on this album will be laden with a thousand memories to those who are familiar with them. Nouvelle Vague's abiding love of these movements and their careful choice and inspired treatment of their material will not only introduce these songs to a whole new generation, but will make you look back on the tracks you knew and loved in a whole different light.

Nostalgic excellence mixed with novelty value? Nouvelle Vague have got it covered.
 

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