Yann Tiersen on fresh tracks

New album, Dust Lane

Paris 

04/10/2010 - 

The sixth studio album by Yann Tiersen is a heady, electric offering that will come as something of a surprise to fans of Valse d’Amélie. Gone are the tiny tunes and minimalist orchestration: in Dust Lane the tetchy Breton singer delivers post-rock mini symphonies that blend keyboards, saturated guitars and vocals in an astonishing acoustic maelstrom. We met up with the singer.

The interview took place in Yann Tiersen’s spacious lounge, cluttered up with cigarette packets, guitars and stacks of vinyl records. Playing in the background was the ghostly electro music of the Third Eye Foundation, a mysterious emanation by his British pal, Matt Elliott. “Matt’s a really close friend who I spent a lot of time with on my first label (Ed., Ici d’Ailleurs, based in Nancy). His influence has to be somewhere in this album,” he said smilingly.

The choice of acoustic atmosphere says much about Dust Lane’s musical leanings. Piano games have been replaced by Moog synthesisers and saturated guitar loops, with pleasing tunes giving in to long, rising passages. “I got a bit fed up of verse and chorus structures,” explained the singer. “For a long time I said that my instrumental pieces were built like songs. But on this album, I needed a freer form. Sometimes the vocals arrive at the end of a track, there are no real rules anymore.”

Instead of his usual colleagues (Claire Pichet, Dominique A), Tiersen chose to work with the impressive backing singers Matt Elliot, Gaëlle Kerrien and Parisian group Syd Matters, of which he is “a long-standing fan”. As a result, there are none of those pop ritornellos that made Monochrome and Jours Tristes (avec Neil Hannon) such hits. The vocals blend into the acoustics and the songs stretch themselves out to the cathartic ending.

The result is a sensation of space and loss of self, orchestrated with incredible attention to detail and contrast by the man-orchestra who produced Rue des Cascades. “On this album, I succeeded in doing what I’d always wanted,” he explained. “Something really dense, a bit like Le Sacre du Printemps or Messiaen’s works. Like an acoustic mass in which you can see all the details as you move closer.”

Palestine

Like his earlier albums, Dust Lane was thought up in the wild spot of Ouessant Island, Tiersen’s stronghold. “I produced all the ideas for the album in the place I’ve got there. It’s been my favourite spot for composing or resting between tours for a long time now.”

More unexpected is the other symbolic place marking the album, Gaza – the stuff of indelible memories for the Breton musician. “At the end of my last tour three years ago, the director of the French Cultural Centre invited us to do a couple of concerts for college students there. Some of the students were then killed after an army attack. It changed my life,” he confessed. “I was bowled over by those teenagers’ solidarity and their thirst for culture. The whole album was permeated with that experience.”  Those impressions are discreetly transcribed into the superb track Palestine, a piece of noise music that centres on an endless repetition of the country’s letters.

After Amélie

This adventurous sixth album makes no concessions – it is the work of complete artistic freedom. To get there, he had to shake himself clear from the huge success of Amélie Poulain. “The film’s soundtrack brought me an audience much more into accordions and Montmartre, it was a real misunderstanding,” he mused. “What I found really hard was during the Retrouvailles tour, where quite a few people were thrown by our rock stuff and left the venue before we finished. Now I’ve dealt with all that. And a lot of foreigners discovered me with Amélie and are still fans.”

He also had to maintain his independence come what may. “It’s been a principle of mine since the start. I’ve always recorded at home, even though I could have demanded a lot of resources from the record house after the success of L’Absente. On Dust Lane, the record house has gone. My partner takes care of tours and management. Everything’s become a lot sounder.”

Never without a new idea, Yann Tiersen says he has a few surprises in store for the first dates of his tour. “We are starting in New York with two special concerts.” The concept? “Doing the complete opposite of the album by playing it totally acoustically, with strings and woodwind.”

Yann Tiersen Dust Lane (Mute/Naïve) 2010

On tour in France and Europe, and 22 November in Paris (Élysée Montmartre).

Jérôme  Pichon

Translation : Anne-Marie  Harper