Album review

Vincent Delerm

Cinematic Charm

Paris 

02/08/2002 - 

New, and successful, comer on the French music scene, we caught up with Vincent Delerm after he had finished supporting Julien Clerc at Le Zénith – and found him sporting Gainsbourg-style stubble on his chin and oozing natural wit and charm:

Vincent Delerm has emerged on the French music scene with a debut eponymous album shot through with wit and irony. Delerm's atmospheric songs, which resemble nothing so much as short films shot in the style of François Truffaut or Claude Lelouch, have generated an increasing amount of media coverage of late. So we felt it was high time to go along and find out more about this fast-rising new star.

RFI/Musique: Vincent, your album has been described as having a very cinematic feel to it. Is that something you deliberately set out to do?
Vincent Delerm: Well, I’d say that I discovered a certain 'intimate' approach to singing and songwriting through films rather than through music or literature. I saw Eric Rohmer’s movie Ma nuit chez Maud while I was still at school and that made a really powerful impact on me. That film made me feel that it was possible to construct a storyline out of something that’s actually quite flimsy and tenuous to begin with. And that’s something that had an effect on my way of thinking very early on. I’ve been really into cinema ever since my schooldays – and even though I went on to study literature at university I actually did my M.A. on a film director: François Truffaut.

You never really seemed destined to launch a singing career, did you?
No, not at all. I started out with the idea of becoming a teacher. I come from a whole family of teachers actually. My grandparents were primary school teachers and so were my aunts and uncles. We’re a teaching family to the point of caricature!… But, I have to admit that I did have a vague feeling quite early on that I wouldn’t end up becoming a teacher. While I was doing my literature degree at Rouen University I got involved with a student theatre troupe called "La réplique" and we did a lot of stuff at local café-théâtres. I soon found out that I was a bit limited as an actor, though, so I got involved with the writing side of things instead. And I soon came to realise that the characters I invented for the theatre could equally well be used in my songs.
I started learning to play the piano around the age of 16/17. I love the aesthetic, seductive side of piano-playing and I have to say I feel physically good just sitting down at the piano. So I can’t say I’m in all that much of a hurry to have a big band playing behind me while I step up front with the mike!

Your career certainly seems to have taken off at lightning speed. You were practically a complete unknown two months ago and now your debut album’s out in record stores, you’re performing in concert at L’Européen for an entire month and you’ve just been supporting Julien Clerc!
It’s all been a bit strange for me really. The album came out the same day as I kicked off my one-month run at L'Européen. And while I was doing the shows my record label manager, Vincent Frèrebeau, would come backstage and tell me how well my album sales were doing – which was great because that really built up my confidence as I went along. Things just seemed to snowball after that.
As you mentioned, I’ve been supporting Julien Clerc in concert. I’ve just finished now actually. It’s funny, because I was meant to be supporting Alain Souchon to start with and then I ended up performing with Julien instead. It was an interesting experience – the audience hadn’t come to see me so I’d find myself going out on stage most nights with the crowd screaming "Juju, Juju!!!"

Would you say that you inherited your intellectual maturity from your family environment, growing up with a father who was a writer?
Well, I think my 'intellectual maturity' as you put it is more linked to my personal experience as a bookworm and film buff! I think books and films have had as great an impact on me as my family life. That’s why you often get had when you read the biographies of great novelists, for instance. You realise that someone like Proust – who was absolutely brilliant at analysing human behaviour and emotions - was actually pretty unsociable. Let’s face it, Proust spent almost his entire life locked up in his bedroom!

Your musical influences seem to lean towards singers like Serge Gainsbourg and Barbara – but they're artists you must have discovered through your parents’ record collection, in fact?
It’s funny, but I seem to come from a generation that's more interested in the past than anything else. Your tastes really form in your school or university days when you have this sort of white-hot period where you feel that that’s the sort of singers you’re attracted to and that’s that. That’s how it was with Barbara - you only have to watch her for half a second and you're completely under her spell! There was something so light and simple about Barbara's early albums, although I have to admit I didn't like her melodramatic diva approach towards the end of her career...
As far as Gainsbourg's concerned, it's true to say that his reputation was built on songwriting more than anything else, but it was always the melody-writer in him that appealed to me most. As a general rule I have to admit I don't like things where the hard work and effort that went into them are apparent. And that holds true whether it's a question of stage presence, acting technique or writing. I love the idea that things should just appear to have emerged naturally without any effort whatsoever…

A bit like the dialogue that takes place at Vincennes Zoo in your song La vipère du Gabon, for instance?
You know, what often happens with me when I'm writing a song is that I get a desire to use a certain word in there somewhere - and in this case the song happened to be inspired by a particularly beautiful snake at the zoo… Anyway, after you get your one-word idea for a song you have to justify it in some way. It's a bit like the song Deauville sans Trintignant (Deauville without Trintignant*) – I loved the idea of the title and then I had to go about constructing a song around the idea. Sometimes things can start from the simplest anecdote which doesn't even seem to contain enough meaning to be made into a song!

There's another remarkable song on the new album, Châtenay-Malabry, about the passing of time where you evoke this wonderful image of a big house standing empty after the holidays...
Well, you know how it is when you're younger you often have the feeling that you can be physically sitting in a room with your family but your mind is away somewhere else entirely. You think the people around you aren't aware of that - that because you're in the same room with them they think you belong to them. Looking back in retrospect, though, you realise that your parents and grandparents were actually cruelly aware that there you were sitting in the same room with them but your mind was somewhere else. And it's delicate human moments like this that I find really powerful. Let's face it, I might well have to go through the same experience with my own kids one day – so in a way Châtenay-Malabry is a sort of lucky charm to ward off that happening!

Your father, Philippe Delerm, is renowned for his minutely detailed descriptions of daily life in his novels. Do you feel his style of writing had an influence on your own?
Well, I think it's fair to say that maybe certain situations in my songs can seem very similar to scenes from my father's books. One thing's for sure, my father definitely had a huge influence on me. After all, it was my father who encouraged me to read so much and listen to the wonderful intimacy in French chanson. People seem to be extremely eager to find links between my father's work and my own, but I honestly can't say that the whole father/son thing has affected me that much. I mean, take someone like Mathieu Chédid, (singer Louis Chédid's son) – he seems to have managed to lead his own career independently of his father's style and I think I have too!
There was no great myth attached to being an artist in my family, you know. My parents led a very ordinary life. My mother worked as an illustrator and my father did his creative writing before he went off and taught his classes. I was 10 years old and I saw my father having his books published and everyone told me how wonderful that was! But, frankly I would have thought it was just as wonderful to have a father who agreed to go and stand in goal when I played football... But I must say I'm really pleased I grew up with the idea that 'artists' don't have to be these tortured souls who live their whole lives hanging over the edge of some dreadful precipice. On the contrary, my father showed me that 'artists' were people who could lead completely normal down-to-earth lives.

What was it like sharing the stage at L'Européen with someone like Jeanne Cherhal?
I'm really happy to have had the experience of working as part of a double bill with Jeanne. It was a brilliant idea for which I have to thank our joint record label, Tôt ou Tard… Jeanne and I come from radically different musical backgrounds, but I think we managed to work really well together doing simple piano-vocals and chanson. The whole thing was made all the more simple because we respected each other's work and didn't try and encroach on one another's territory. It was a very rewarding experience for both of us I think – and I have to say it couldn't have been otherwise seeing as Jeanne's such a wonderful human being!
How important is it for someone like you who's just starting out in the music business to have contact with more established artists?
Well, up until around two or three years ago I did absolutely everything on my own. I even designed and produced the posters for my own shows! That was before I met Thomas Fersen and François Morel (an actor from the "Deschiens" troupe). I hit it off with François immediately. I love the way he talks about music and I really admire him because he's someone who's very "rich and full" as an artist but at the same time he's totally in touch with everyday life.
Anyway, what happened was I sent François a demo tape of my work and he very kindly got back to me after that, inviting me to take part in a radio programme. In fact, my songs ended up being played regularly on this radio station for about eighteen months before I actually signed a record deal. It's funny though, because I have to say I didn’t feel in any particular hurry to bring out an album…

Besides being signed to the same label as Jeanne Cherhal, Tôt ou Tard is also where you met Thomas Fersen, isn't it?
I always knew I wanted to work with Tôt ou Tard and not any other label. I love the way producers at Tôt ou Tard orchestrate songs – they make them sound so wonderfully modern and dynamic even though the arrangements are all purely acoustic. I'd actually met (Tôt ou Tard director) Vincent Frèrebeau before but Thomas really helped me out. After Thomas had put in a good word for me Vincent came to see me in concert at the Théâtre des Déchargeurs - which is a really small venue with only about 40 seats! I'd already performed two concert runs there during the winters of 2000 and 2001. And I went from there to being booked as a support act to Thomas Fersen at La Cigale!

How do you feel when critics compare you to Alain Souchon or Arthur H?
Well, when people start making comparisons with other singers you never know whether it's because they see similarities between our lyrics, our melodies or our vocals. Then again maybe critics find some similarity between me and Souchon's fragility or the timbre of Arthur's voice - or maybe they're just comparing big noses or something!
One thing's for sure, I definitely feel I fit into a certain tradition of French chanson as far as my songwriting's concerned. I come from a background where the norm's three verses, three choruses and the idea of a song being a basic form of entertainment.

Your songs have always contained a lot of references to actors - I'm thinking of people like Fanny Ardant, Gérard Depardieu and Jean Reno, for example. And recently you took things a step further, actually recording a duo with the French actress Irène Jacob...
I'd seen Irène in Kieslowski's films and been struck by her performance but I actually got to meet her through a programme on France Inter. Anyway, I ended up asking Irène whether she'd agree to guest on one of my albums one day. I have to admit I really went out of my way to meet her. I was originally scheduled to sing on the same programme as Sylvie Vartan - and I insisted on changing the whole schedule so I could appear on the following day's programme and meet Irène Jacob instead!
The tonality of Irène's voice was absolutely perfect for the album and I got lots of other lucky breaks too - such as getting the authorisation to use Trintignant's voice as well. That was absolutely essential for the album!

You seem to come across as very nonchalant and ironic. Is that your natural character or a sort of public persona you've created for yourself that corresponds more to your songs?
Well, I'd say the way I perform on stage is completely natural - but at the same time I have to admit everything's carefully planned in advance. I leave very little to improvisation. I can sometimes be totally different on stage from how I am in everyday life and so yes, that does create a kind of double persona. The thing is, though, as an artist you really have to do that split personality thing at some point because if you want to do very moving songs like Châtenay-Malabry where you really give your all, you have to keep some sort of distance. I mean otherwise what would happen if the show was a complete flop one night? You'd have to turn round and throw your whole existence into question!
In a way you do need to have a certain lightness of touch to get the more difficult, heavy songs across. And the ideal way to do that is to invent a sort of persona who's a lot more insolent and ironic than you yourself are in everyday life. I've always been someone who's put a lot of thought into how songs will come across on stage. The thing you have to realise is when you go out under the spotlights you can't pretend. You're up on stage because you want to be there and somewhere down the line that's not natural at all!

Whatever the case, you certainly seem to have a perfect sense of timing when it comes to organising your set...
That's something that really struck Cyril Wambergue - the guy who produced the new album. Cyril was amazed that before going into the studio I knew exactly what order I wanted the songs to go in. The shorter songs like Charlotte Carrington and Catégorie Bukowski are there to break up the longer pieces and add a certain rhythm to the whole. Those are the kind of things you have to think about when you're organising a live concert, you know. You have to realise that there's a time for poetic lyricism, a time for widening your horizons and a time for dealing with the concrete nitty-gritty of life. I always try to take that into account when I'm working on the running order - I like to try and strike a perfect balance between my songs somewhere.

Interview: Pascale Hamon
Translation: Julie Street

Vincent Delerm (Tôt ou Tard)

* Jean-Louis Trintignant is a famous French actor.