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Les Rita Mitsouko go multi-lingual
A double dose of Variéty
Paris
24/04/2007 -
Currently back in the news with their seventh album, Les Rita Mitsouko are on a quest to share their passion for music with fans much further afield. Looking beyond French frontiers, the duo have recorded two versions of their new album, Variéty, one entirely in English (due out in Europe mid-June), the other a multi-lingual mix dominated by songs in French (released in France on 23 April).
It's a joy to hook up with Catherine Ringer and Frédéric Chichin again and find them both as energetically frank, outspoken and charming as ever. During our interview the duo were visibly relaxed, Catherine eating an apple with her Swiss army knife and Fred rolling himself a cigarette. They both appeared to be delighted to be back in the spotlight presenting their new album, the aptly-named Variéty, a musically mixed bag featuring everything from full-on rock and a romantic ballad (Ma vieille ville) to a song about anorexia (Terminal Beauty) and the ultra-groovy Ding ding dong. Les Rita Mitsouko at their best in any language!
Catherine Ringer: Yes, and that’s because we’re not the type of group who believe in bringing out albums when there’s nothing to bring out. We don’t systematically release greatest hits compilations and live albums when there’s nothing special in stock. We’ve always refused to function like that. In between La Femme trombone and the new album, we brought out a live album recorded with the Orchestre Lamoureux and we’ve been busy doing our job as musicians. People may feel they haven’t seen that much of us, though, as we keep a pretty low profile even when we’re around!
So what made you want to raise your profile again and make this album?
Catherine Ringer: Well, Fred had just got over two years of hepatitis C and he’d had a really tough time of it. But when he got through the convalescence period it was like he had this total renaissance. He experienced a sudden surge of energy. It was just incredible. He began composing masses of new material, but the thing was I was meant to be going on tour in Italy. Then, just before that, our record company called up and said it was time to bring out a single. So we sat down and started working on some songs. We came up with three or four then before we knew it we had eight… The songs just came to us spontaneously! We felt like we’d tapped into this incredibly productive vein, so I cancelled my tour and we got down to work.
Who was responsible for the lyrics on the new album?
Catherine Ringer: What happened was Fred wrote the music first and then I listened to each melody over and over before sitting down and writing whatever came into my head, whether it occurred to me in French or English. Then we translated just about all of the songs so they’d feature on the two different versions of the album. Marie-Antoinette is a song we wrote for Sofia Coppola’s film. She was looking for artists at the time to contribute to the soundtrack. But it was all really urgent; the film was already in the final editing stage. When I was working on the song, I was trying to remember exactly who Marie-Antoinette was so I got out my dictionary of famous names and things just came to me from there. But Sofia Coppola didn’t take the song in the end. She always works with the same bunch of people: Air, Phoenix, etc. As for Terminal Beauty – the song I recorded as a duet with Serj Tankian from System of a Down – I was inspired by a series of photos I saw in a glossy women’s magazine. The story about anorexic models wasn’t a big deal in the news back then. But I’ve always been interested in the way beauty canons in the West have changed with the times. I think the images of those young girls all looking angry, ill and terribly anxious are absolutely awful.
Why did you decide to make two versions of Variéty, one in English and one in French?
Catherine Ringer: We want to be able to communicate with the whole of Europe, with people who are into our music and people who play the same kind of stuff as us. I think it would be a pretty sad state of affairs to remain completely ‘Franco-French’! I think when you’ve got an interesting story to tell you might as well tell it in English so that everyone understands you all the way from Hungary to Sweden! But French is still there – we haven’t abandoned it altogether. The album exists in French as well. It’s just that everyone’s free to choose the version they prefer!
Fred Chichin: The thing is if you just make an album in French you can only sell it in France. And we can’t afford to do that. If we did, there’d be no more Rita Mitsouko! It’s not like we’re subsidised, you know. We’re a privately-run group. We paid for the entire production of the new album ourselves! So having a wider market is an absolute necessity if we want to earn back the money we spent and make a bit of a profit. It’s not like we want to go round buying expensive cars or anything, we just want to keep Les Rita Mitsouko going and produce a few other groups, too.
Is the idea of appealing to a wider market part of the reason you recorded a Chinese version of Berceuse?
Fred Chichin: Yes, it is. Catherine actually took Chinese pronunciation lessons for that and I think it works really well. What’s more, we intend to translate three or four other songs into Mandarin and put out a Chinese EP. After that, the plan is to put together a mix of songs in English, Chinese and French and bring out an album over there. No-one’s heard of Les Rita Mitsouko in China but with the French market becoming increasingly closed what with downloading and everything, we’ve got to get out there and make new fans. Besides which we think the whole idea’s a lot of fun!
Catherine Ringer: Right from the moment the group got together in 1979, we’ve always functioned a bit like that anyway. Even the fact that we called ourselves Les Rita Mitsouko – a name that sounds good in lots of different languages – was a way of opening up to the world. We’ve never thought of ourselves as a "French rock" band, just French people who happen to play Western-style rock.
You’re also one of the rare French bands who look after every stage of the production process yourselves…
Fred Chichin: We treasure our independence! But we like the idea of working with other people, too, so that we can have a bit of objectivity and distance on what we do. This time round we shared the artistic direction on the album with Mark Plati (renowned for his work with David Bowie, The Cure and Brazilian Girls among others). By the time we got round to working with him, though, the tracks were already at a very advanced stage. The foundations of them all were already programmed in terms of bass, guitars, synthesisers and vocals. What Mark did was help us boost the songs. He had a bit of fun adding an organ here and there, reviewing a few structural points, shortening a chorus and lengthening another song… Mark was also responsible for the entire mixing process. We had no problem trusting him on that score what with all the experience he’s had up to now!
Fleur de la Haye
Translation : Julie Street
