It’s a Friday night in Manchester and Band on the Wall is sold out, filled to the rafters with cool cats of all ages. For the uninitiated, Nouvelle Vague are a French band whose repertoire only extends to covering songs that were first released in the 80s – albeit in a style of their very own. Touring the anniversary of their debut album (released 20 years ago) and a new album (Should I Stay Or Should I Go) allows fans young and old to see what all the fuss is about.
They take the darkened stage for a stripped back version of Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, and remain in shadow for their take on ‘People Are People’ (Depeche Mode) and Only You (Yazoo). It isn’t until their (frankly glorious) rendition of XTC’s Making Plans for Nigel that the lights rise and we start to glimpse the people on the stage in front of us – four shadowy blokey blokes wielding guitars, double bass, keyboards and drums, and two frontwomen who we are presuming are Marine Quéméré and Alonya – as they are all over the new record. Alonya in particular performs as if all of these songs were written by her, about her, and everyone in the audience came to see her.
But this brings us to an important point – Nouvelle Vague was the brainchild of Marc Collin and the late Olivier Libaux and over the years there has been quite the rotating cast of female frontpeople, two more of whom – Phoebe Killdeer and Mélanie Pain – offer support in the form of their band, Kill The Pain – a melange of pop, funk and punk that gets the audience suitably souped up ahead of the main attraction (their song ‘Meditations’ is probably unknown to most of the audience but a hell of a lot of people are singing “What the fuck is going on?” by the time the song is over). Phoebe and Mélanie return to the stage a handful of times throughout the Nouvelle Vague set, performing the hell out of the likes of ‘This Charming Man’ and ‘She’s in Parties’.
There is a story – probably apocryphal – that the various singers employed over the years were unfamiliar with the source material before they recorded their versions. The happy flipside of this is that, for the younger members of the audience, it’s possible that Nouvelle Vague covers of songs like ‘I Melt Into You’ or even ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ replace the originals as the definitive versions. Howsoever you cut it, Nouvelle Vague in their current incarnation make music that it’s all but impossible not to smile about.
Words by Pete Wild
Picky Bastards 