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Murat records in Nashville

Fighting "the ordinary course of things"

Paris

22/09/2009 -

Jean-Louis Murat instigated a dramatic change of scene on his new album, heading off to record in Nashville, Tennessee. RFI Musique hooked up with the notoriously hard-working musician to find out whether Le Cours ordinaire des choses (The Ordinary Course of Things) marks a break from the rest of Murat's oeuvre or is simply a reaction against routine.

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How best to sum up Jean-Louis Murat's career to date? In the words of the late British DJ John Peel (talking about The Fall): "Always different, always the same!" If there has been one consistency in Murat's work over the past decade or so, it has surely been to deliver what fans were least expecting. In 2007, Charles et Léo featured Murat performing Léo Ferré's reworkings of Baudelaire's poems and the following year Murat wrong-footed everyone again, adapting the myth of Tristan and Isolde (on Tristan). Now Le Cours ordinaire des choses finds Murat heading out to the U.S. for the first time since Mustango to record an album of Nashville-influenced country-rock.

"It's a French musician thing," explains Murat, "this going off like Eddie Mitchell or Johnny Hallyday to see whether things are better elsewhere. When I got to Nashville I actually found myself wondering what the hell I was doing there. But I soon found out: Nashville, a place that's no bigger than Clermont-Ferrand, has over 1,000 recording studios! What's more, the prices are reasonable and the musicians are exceptional. Unlike their French counterparts, American musicians don't try and play when you're singing, they listen to the songs and they work with tried and trusted equipment. There's none of these fancy special effect pedals and what have you!"

After spending his last few albums locked away in solitary confinement in the Auvergne, Murat claims that he enjoyed the collaborative process on his new album. "I'd turn up in the studio and do my songs as simple guitar-vocals, then we'd go right ahead and do another version with all the musicians. I left the musicians free to do whatever they wanted in the studio and wham! bam! in a couple of takes we were done!" he says. "This was very different from the way I worked on 'Moujik' (2002) or 'Taormina' (2006.) This time round I deliberately relinquished control."

Look back in anger

Despite the change of location and the collaboration with American musicians, the substance of Murat's songwriting remains little changed. The maverick French songwriter insists on penning deliberately obscure lyrics and he mines a largely dark and unhappy vein right from the opening track on the album, Comme un incendie. "That song sprang from a feeling of personal anger and frustration," Murat admits, "I was feeling pretty depressed after my last tour. There I was performing alone on stage every night because I couldn't afford to pay a band and I was playing to audiences of about 150 people. Meanwhile, Bénabar would be there in the same town on the same night packing out huge venues like Le Zénith! While sceptics might point out that Bénabar's songs are more accessible to audiences, Murat mutters that "I don't give a damn whether my lyrics make sense or not. I get a kick out of using incongruous terms like 'encoléré' and 'enculade' just because they sound good and that's that!"

Murat's gift for combining the musicality of language with the languorous melancholy of the blues has helped him carve out a unique place on the French music scene. But the artist himself claims he is not so gifted as all that, putting his 20 albums down to hard work and discipline. "I get inspiration from what I'm reading and I've learnt a lot from listening to Keith Richards or Neil Young, both of whom I really admire. Those guys didn't mess around, believe me!… I force myself to do two hours' guitar a day. I've seen the difference between gifted musicians who were complete dilettantes and those who were only moderately gifted but who worked hard. Well, some of them have abandoned music, some of them got into drugs and some of them died along the way… But although I was one of the less gifted ones, I'm still going strong today!" And, at the age of 57, Murat proves he is still very much committed to fighting against "the ordinary course of things!"