Indochine - The band on France's throne

French bands

Indochine are, to this day, the only French-language band to have sold more than ten million records over the course of their career. This isn't just a cold number to flaunt, but rather an interesting fact, given that French culture has always been tied, hand in glove, to the figure of the chansonnier. The first bands able to achieve considerable commercial success only emerged in the late Seventies, incredibly late compared not only to the English scene, but also to the Italian one.

Add to this the greater difficulty bands face in staying at the top compared to a solo singer, the premature break-ups, and careers rarely lasting longer than a decade, and it becomes clear why French culture has reserved a somewhat limited mythology for the category. This is what makes Indochine so significant: they defied an unfavourable set of circumstances, managing to establish themselves and become one of the iconic acts of the Eighties. They then survived a decade - the Nineties - in which everything seemed to go wrong, and which led many of their peers to throw in the towel, before making a comeback in 2002 and staying in the spotlight ever since. All the while delivering quality pop-rock that kept pace with the times, riding out stylistic shifts and taking on new challenges without ever resting on their laurels.

The origins and the boom

Indochine's formation came together extremely quickly. Guitarist Dominique Nicolas and singer Nicola Sirkis met in December 1980, when they both joined Les Espions, a Parisian rock band destined to split up without leaving a trace. Their time in the band was very brief, as neither of them felt at ease there. They decided to break away and start a new project. Saxophonist Dimitri Bodiansky, whom they met through a mutual friend, soon joined the duo.

The fledgling band, closely attuned to sounds coming from Britain, began writing songs with lively rhythms, built on simple, repetitive structures. On 29 September they made their live debut at the Rose Bonbon, a cult venue for the local new wave scene, which had also hosted the likes of Taxi Girl, Suicide Romeo and Artefact. Indochine, however, had an extra weapon: their charismatic frontman. Sporting demodé outfits with clear nods to the uniforms of 1930s regimes, an over-the-top haircut, but above all a nervy, powerful voice capable of bringing out melodies that were still rather skeletal, Nicola caught the attention of young producer Didier Guinochet.

From there to a contract with a subsidiary of Bmg was a short step. At the start of 1982 the single “Dizzidence politik” hit the shops, its sleeve emblazoned with the word Indochine in huge letters above the enigmatic, slightly uneasy expressions of the trio. The song went unnoticed, but the band wasn't discouraged, and brought on board Stéphane, Nicola's twin brother, who would switch between keyboards and guitars.

When the four of them went into the studio to record their new single, their enthusiasm was such that they ended up putting together a handful of songs. They then pushed Guinochet to grant them the budget needed to finish mixing in London, so they could make use of more suitable equipment. The producer agreed, and in hindsight he could only be pleased with that choice, because the result of those sessions was a mini-album that went down in the history of French pop, L'aventurier.

Indochine's debut barely runs twenty minutes and contains six songs as sharp as stilettos. The title track is one of new wave's anthems, but above all it's a song that makes you reflect on just how important it is to have the right means to record ambitious music. Up to that point Indochine had performed live with second-rate gear, rudimentary drum machines and cheap amplifiers, and if you set aside the singer's personality, they were indistinguishable from the sea of bands populating the French underground, all lumped together under the label later known as coldwave. Music that, while it still boasts a fiercely devoted following today, mostly came across as a hapless counterpart to British post-punk. “L'aventurier” freed Indochine from that confinement and launched them into the stratosphere. Produced with a budget to match its ambitions, it carries no inferiority complex whatsoever and shows off an airy sound that, even today, hasn't lost an ounce of its miraculous blend of energy and delicacy. It's a small volcano of ideas and memorable melodic themes: the keyboards of the intro, which seem to rise up out of the Far East; the guitar riff that launches surf rock into space; the synthetic refrains that follow one another as the second and then the third minute ticks by; the tense, dissonant pause that splits the song in two; the instrumental coda. A low-key synth-pop band would have built a whole song around each of these ideas, but Indochine were on a mission, and already seemed well aware of it.

It's such a powerful, programmatic track that many of the traits that would make the band legendary are already traceable within it. Being a rock symbol without resorting to muscle and macho posturing, instead making candor its strong suit. Having created a positive imaginary world dominated by fantasy and rich in hope, in open contrast with Anglophone post-punk. The ability to strike a chord with teenagers and generate in them a strong sense of belonging, especially the more sensitive ones. And finally, the strategic use of music videos, specifically a small gem of overlapping, filtered images, with Nicola's androgynous face and dangling raven forelock repeatedly thrust into close-up.

The other tracks are, however, far from mere filler - "Indochine" is in fact essential, and not only because it gave the band its name: the power-pop charge, the frenetic guitar lines that intertwine and play with echo, the lyrics that set the idols of Western music (Elvis, Buddy Holly) against Vietnamese settings steeped in mystery, at least to the eyes of a French teenager (the Gulf of Tonkin, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu). There's also room for a fine electronic reworking of "L'opportuniste", from the songbook of the great Jacques Dutronc, and for a new version of "Dizzidence politik", whose obsessive riff hasn't lost an ounce of its original energy.

Success doesn't come immediately: the album is released in November 1982 and at first only a few people notice, but by the summer of the following year Indochine are the coolest band in the country. The LP climbs to number 7, a position matched by the single of the title track: they sell 210,000 and 580,000 copies respectively. To this day, "L'aventurier" is the song everyone identifies with Indochine.

Le péril jaune (1983)

The second album comes out in November 1983 and shows a band in evolution. What the few tracks of the debut could only hint at is here fully unpacked and taken to its extreme consequences. Oriental suggestions take up six of the ten titles, Nicola's emotional, nervy vocals turn into a torrent of words, the rhythms grow ever more hammering, yet the harmony among the various elements is never in question.

Driven by Dominique's superb guitar refractions and Dimitri's powerful sax, "La sécheresse du Mekong" instantly transports the listener thousands of miles away: "Setting off to explore a virgin forest, the unknown region of the Kao Bang rice fields, teeming with wild beasts and cannibals / During the drought of the Mekong they were cut off from the world for ten days". The barrage of unfamiliar names creates a sense of disorientation and fascination with the exotic, likely similar to what Italians were simultaneously experiencing with the creations of Franco Battiato.

The other standout is "Miss Paramount", which describes a cinema date with a girl and images from adventure films of various eras. The fervor is such that Nicola comes close to a rockabilly vibrato, while the second part of the chorus is the domain of Dominique's effects-laden guitar. The rest of the tracklist is split between funk syncopations ("Kao Bang"), amphetamine-fuelled progressions ("Razzia", a sort of remake of "L'aventurier") and occasional atmospheric moments ("Okinawa").

"Miss Paramount" and "Kao Bang" are released as singles, initially without much impact, though over the years they'd become two live staples. The album still sells 110,000 copies in France (where it reaches number 12) and 50,000 in Sweden, a flare-up that unfortunately wouldn't be repeated, largely due to the band's reluctance to fly to Scandinavia to promote later releases.

3 (1985)

It's rightfully one of the great new wave classics. The quartet decides to ease off the intensity a little, resulting in a more varied record that loses none of its dynamism and vitality, but shows a band now better able to play with nuance. The maturity they've reached is also confirmed by the broader range of themes tackled.

Inspired by the cover of Patti Smith's "Horses", "3ème sexe" is a hymn to diversity and tolerance, at a time when the subject was far from being on the agenda, at least in France: "And they hold hands, a girl in the masculine, a boy in the feminine [...] The great shock for the most prudish, it's almost a witch hunt".

The song would immediately prove a double-edged sword: teenagers would embrace its message of freedom, but the media would fiercely criticize its content, repeatedly accusing the band of promoting homosexuality. Time has thankfully done it justice, and today "3ème sexe" stands as a cornerstone of French rock, widely admired across the board for how far ahead of its time it was. The backing track flaunts jangly guitars, atmospheric keyboards, bass lines split between synthesizer and fretless, layered percussion courtesy of session player Arnaud Devos, and pulsing sax to reinforce the chorus. "Canary Bay" does even better, drawing on similar sounds and adding a vocal-sampling interlude with a symphonic flavor. The martial gait of "Monte Cristo" brings a solid dose of epicness to the palette, confirmed by "A l'assaut", amid swirling acoustic guitar and an airy chorus punctuated by sax and synthetic sparks.

Inspired by Marguerite Duras's famous erotic novel, "L'amant", "Trois nuits par semaine" rises out of celestial electronic swells and, amid melodic variations and feather-light guitars, keeps its disembodied tone throughout, especially in the coda. The romantic peak, however, comes at the close, with "Tes yeux noir", a meditation on leaving behind the person you love, unfolding through muted rhythms, expansive guitars, touching sax melodies, and keyboards that mimic an orchestral sweep.

The success is enormous: the album reaches number 2, stays in the top twenty for a year and sells 910,000 copies, while the single containing remixes of "3ème sexe" and "Trois nuits par semaine" peaks at number 3 and reaches 660,000 copies. An alternate version of "Tes yeux noir" is also released as a single and, though it only reaches number 8, stays on the charts long enough to hit 250,000 copies: part of that result is owed to the television exposure of the music video, directed by Serge Gainsbourg and destined to leave its mark on a whole generation's memory. The maestro even grants himself a cameo, alongside the most deserving pupils he could have wished for.

Indochine au Zénith (1986)

More than for its content, which is nonetheless flawlessly executed, Indochine's first live album is important because the tour it was drawn from puts the band under the media spotlight as never before. Criticism grows ever harsher: they can't play, they use a drum machine while serious bands have a real drummer, all they can do is strike poses, and of course they're too effeminate. When Robert Smith, passing through France, notices them and accuses them of copying his look, their detractors pounce on such an easy target like bears on honey. The quartet struggles with the situation, Nicola in particular, but decides not to give in to the temptation of controversy and keeps moving forward on its own path.

The younger audience stays loyal to them, and the album not only sells 250,000 copies in France, where it reaches number 7, but tops 100,000 in Peru, where it becomes the record phenomenon of the year. Their music has such evocative power that, wherever backed by adequate distribution, it evidently manages to knock down language barriers.

7000 danses (1987)

The pressure is mounting, and the band takes a considerable amount of time to work on the follow-up to 3, aiming for songs as sophisticated as possible. Use of the Fairlight, already hinted at on the previous record, becomes heavy, and production gets complicated, as the instrument frequently glitches and needs constant reprogramming. The sessions - held over several stints between the Côte d'Azur, the Caribbean and London - feature drummers of the caliber of Mark Brzezicki (Big Country) and Warren Cann (Ultravox), whose contribution, according to Dimitri, will nonetheless turn out to be negligible.

Some compositions even look to classical music, as shown by the instrumental "La Bûddha affaire," which seems to blend Andean flutes with Prokofiev. At times you get the feeling the band has stretched the songs out too much, with atmospheric pauses and a somewhat self-indulgent display of the various electronic gadgets, but as always there's no shortage of gems. "La chevauchée des champs de blé" is a dreamy rock manifesto with minimalist keyboard flourishes, "La machine à rattraper le temps" a rhythmic love story that marries futuristic effects with acoustic guitar, "Les tzars" a techno-pop gem tailor-made to fill dancefloors. And enough to get them censored by the fledgling MTV, thanks to a video in which Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Che Guevara and Pope John Paul II parade along cheerfully together.

Given the unusual nature of the record, sales are more than satisfactory: number 5 and 320,000 copies in France, plus another 100,000 worldwide, most of them in Peru.

The band then decides on a four-date tour of Lima and the surrounding area. The event is epoch-making and dominates all the local media for days. On YouTube you can find a full recording of the most famous concert, the one at the Coliseo Amauta, though the sound quality is rather poor. Peruvian newspapers, however, steer clear of a rather uncomfortable detail: the organization of one of the shows had in fact been subcontracted to a powerful local drug trafficker, who kept the band holed up in his apartments for days. Leaving Peru on the verge of a diplomatic incident, Indochine would swear never to set foot there again. Their local success would wane from then on, although the band is still alive and well today in the collective imagination as one of the symbols of the Eighties.

Le baiser (1990)

It's a snapshot of one of the toughest moments in the band's career. First of all because of Dimitri's departure: Dominique and the Sirkis brothers part ways with him by mutual agreement, after realizing his condition is worsening day by day, both because of drug dependency and the physical stress brought on by touring. Although Dimitri still believes he's able to carry on, he accepts his bandmates' decision and leaves the group, while maintaining an unbreakable bond of friendship with Nicola.

Secondly, the first cracks appear between Nicola and Dominique: the guitarist is tired of the fact that, even though most of the musical arrangement work falls on his shoulders, all the spotlight is on the singer. Frustrated by the situation, he decides not to take part in the tour supporting the new album, forcing the whole band to a standstill. Nicola would later recall: "I realize every day that people only look at me, and that must have been hard for him. He couldn't stand it, but we never really talked about it. There was an ego issue going back to the days of L'aventurier. That's also why we'd chosen never to appear in photos on the album covers."

Despite the critical situation, Le baiser is an admirable work and shows a band with no fear whatsoever, blending rock with unusual instruments, somewhere between dance and new age. Thanks also to the help of producer Philippe Eidel, a great world music enthusiast, Indochine immediately grasp which direction the Nineties would take. The single is "Des fleurs pour Salinger," with its Eastern-tinged strings contrasting against a programmed bass, edging close to house music (the sound is curiously close to that of the contemporary, Panella-era Battisti). The lyrics are a condensed, fictionalized biography of the famous writer: "In his room with his cult, long before the American psyche became infatuated with zen, he withdrew from the world, from the whole world. Here are some flowers for Salinger, guest of a monastery."

"More..." is an imposing, mystically tinged soundscape: blanket keyboards, santur (an ancient Iranian stringed instrument) and mechanical percussion, which slowly pile up until they burst into a mosaic of electric riffs. The title track is a vignette of minimalist rock that does away with drums but not with making its electric heart beat. "Les plus mauvaises nuits" draws on exoticisms not far removed from Japan's David Sylvian. "Punishment Park," a duet with an ethereal Juliette Binoche, boasts a minimalist string introduction before breaking into a graceful electro-acoustic gallop.

The album stops at number 9, but still manages to shift 190,000 copies.

Crossing the Desert

In 1990 the comedy trio Les Inconnus release "Isabelle a les yeux bleus." While the song is a parody of "Partenaire particulier," a new wave anthem by the band of the same name, the video instead takes aim at Indochine, the Sirkis brothers in particular. The whole country ends up laughing at them, and the band's move to record the track themselves, likeable as it is, does little good. In hindsight, this episode can be pinpointed as the moment Indochine begin to fall out of favor.

There's still room, however, for the success of Le Birthday Album 1981-1991 (number 3 and 410,000 copies sold). It's an important anthology in that it brings together the band's hits in the versions released as singles, often different from the album versions. It also contains the pleasant unreleased track "La guerre est finie".

Then comes the collapse: the band is suddenly deemed passé, written off as an Eighties relic unable to move with the times, and no one seems interested in what they're doing anymore. Un jour dans notre vie (1993) and Wax (1996) are bought only by their most die-hard fans: both stay on the charts for just one week, reaching number 29 and number 27 respectively (selling 19,000 and 17,000 copies).

The anthology Unita (1996) and the live album Indo Live (1997) fare much better: leaning on a setlist of classics, they reach number 6 (170,000 copies) and number 12 (220,000 copies) respectively. By now Indochine are the typical band whose audience impatiently waits for "the old songs" to show up during the concerts. Meanwhile, Bmg drops them and they move over to Sony.

Yet the new material is anything but tired. Un jour dans notre vie actually shows sounds perfectly in sync with Anglophone rock, as the splendid title track proves - it seems to anticipate Blur's "Girls And Boys", though its wistful melody would lend itself beautifully to the more intimate live reinterpretations that would come many years later. And then there's the guitar refrain that pops up at 2'20" in "Sur les toits du monde", strikingly similar to the one in Sonic Youth's "Diamond Sea", released two years later.

If "Savoure le rouge" is their Madchester-style track, the anxious "Vietnam Glam" is pretty much explained by its title, and "Crystal Song Telegram" offers an unprecedented spatial take on the rhythm and blues pulse already typical of Bo Diddley (the lyrics, meanwhile, are Nicola's dedication to his brother and his struggles with drugs). It's really hard to understand how songs like these could have been considered outdated at the time: far more likely is that everyone was busy listening to something else. Noir Désir, for instance, who achieved their definitive consecration in those very years.

At the end of the disastrous 1994 tour, Dominique leaves the band: he can't stand the dip in success, and above all he can no longer stand Nicola. After fourteen years of wear and tear, the rope has snapped. When the sessions for Wax begin, the band is down to Sirkis alone, who, unable to handle the composition and arrangement of an album by himself - since Dominique had always taken care of that until then - brings in producers Jean-Pierre Pilot (keyboards) and Alexandre Azaria (guitars) as full members, along with bassist Marc Éliard, already used live years earlier. The record suffers from a few dead spots, understandable given the band's reshuffling, but as usual there's no shortage of material worth remembering: the Suede-like power ballad "Kissing My Song", the distorted torpedo "Satellite", the electronic march "Drugstar", on which Dimitri reappears as a guest on sax.

Dancetaria (1999)

Just when things seem like they couldn't get worse, Stéphane's health deteriorates. Worn down by hepatitis C, he dies on February 27, 1999, not even forty years old. Nicola retreats to Brittany for a few months to process his grief. He later states: "From that moment on I stopped believing in God - before I believed at least a little, but death swept everything away". Showing remarkable strength, the singer - by now the last member of the original lineup - decides to carry on and includes on the new album four tracks his brother had written before the end. These are obviously the ones he remains most attached to, particularly "Atomic Sky" and "Stef II", still part of the setlists today.

The record is important above all, though, because it marks the meeting between Nicola and Olivier Gérard, a young Indochine fan who one day sends him some tapes on which he'd had fun remixing their classics. Nicola is so struck by the result that he immediately summons the young man and hands him the arrangement of the new album. A fan of the electronic trends of the period, Gérard has no qualms about attempting fusions close to those of Chemical Brothers and Moby, while elsewhere veering toward the sophisticated pop of Cardigans, White Town and other names now forgotten by most.

The title track is a seven-minute collision of techno and orchestral arrangements, "Astroboy" lands somewhere between hardcore and trance, "Justine" marries saturated guitars with downtempo rhythms, and "Atomic Sky" is a velvety alternative-dance anthem. Guitars, on the other hand, dominate the romantic atmospheres of "Just toi et moi" and the power pop of "Stef II". The album reaches number 14 and sells 70,000 copies.

Paradize (2002)

At the start of 2000, Bmg tries to cash in on Stéphane's death by planning a collection of old hits, Génération Indochine, which manages to reach number 3 and sell over 240,000 copies before Nicola takes the label to court and succeeds in blocking the operation.

In January 2001, the acoustic live album Nuits intimes is released (number 22, 50,000 copies), after which a team is put together to work on the new album: that's how Boris Jardel (guitars) and Matthieu Rabaté (drums) join Olivier Gérard and Marc Éliard.

The result is an ambitious project of fifteen songs spanning over seventy minutes, which Sony tries to steer toward a polished, sellable pop-rock sound, especially once it realizes how abrasive Olivier's production has turned out. Nicola, however, has complete faith in his partner and insists on his own vision.

The title track takes off on the notes of a deceptively new-wave-flavoured synth, but it's soon clear the coordinates lie elsewhere, as soon as filtered drums, abrasive guitars and towering electronic choirs kick in. Nicola's voice, always particularly expressive, has over the years grown closer to Dave Gahan's, though it decidedly has more range at its disposal, as shown by the ethereal falsettos that pop up here and there. To heighten its chameleon-like appeal, it's also warped as needed by various electronic treatments.

The grainy sound of the instruments, guitars above all, places the album in territory unmistakably close to that of Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails, marrying them to Nicola's melodic sense and generating a surprising hybrid of chanson and industrial rock. The new formula seems to expand infinitely on traits that have always been characteristic of Indochine's music, such as epic scope, melancholy, fantasy and adolescent romanticism. That's why "Electrastar" is perhaps the masterpiece of the album, the track that gathers all these elements and lets them loose in one of their most powerful choruses. And it's no coincidence that the lyrics are dedicated to Stéphane: "So I would have liked to protect us, I see you falling in battle but I don't forget, time has stopped but everything has gone on, and it hurts".

Faster and more saturated than ever, "Punker" is driven by the jabbing of an electric piano, while "Mao Boy" eases the tension with strings and sweet synthetic scoring. The lyrics, however, paint yet another disillusioned picture of death: "One day you'll understand, gods here and there, that none of this exists". The delicate melody of "Dunkerque" is submerged under a maelstrom of sounds (acoustic guitars, distortion, programming, brass, drums, rattles, choirs, synths lavished both in embroidered riffs and cacophonous hisses), while "Dark" manages to breathe, resting on atmospheric electronic trails and a bassline straight out of Peter Hook's playbook. If "Marilyn" is a tribute from its very title and borrows the cadence of "Disposable Teens", the caustic catchiness of "Popstitute" takes aim, albeit through metaphor, at the figure of the pope: "I no longer wanted to waste my time repeating everything I already know [...] I just want to take a spin through paradise, I just want to take a spin through hell [...] now that we're old enough to understand everything, hating everything is what we've learned". On the piano ballad "Le grand secret" Nicola duets with Melissa Auf Der Maur, in what is the most delicate moment of the record (the track was criticized by Sony for its lack of a rhythm section, but it was released as a single anyway).

Although most of the tracklist is credited to Nicola and Olivier, for the first time in one of the band's albums songs by outside writers appear. Through a mutual friend, the brilliant singer-songwriter Jean-Louis Murat gives them the intimate sketch "Un singe en hiver", while "J'ai demandé à la lune" comes from Mickaël Furnon, recommended to Nicola by executive producer Hervé Lausanne. Furnon's band, Mickey 3d, would later become a heavyweight name on the French alternative scene. However, in the author's original intention, the track was a slow acoustic-guitar number with a far from thrilling structure, despite its distinctive melody. Olivier transforms it into a stentorian, tension-laden march, crossed by an unsettling electronic whistle and elevated in the second verse by the voice of Pauline Léonet, at the time eight years old, the daughter of a friend of Nicola's. The result is a track that resembles nothing else, so it's no surprise that it's capable of reviving the band's career. Released as a single, it reaches number 1 and sells 800,000 copies, while the album, peaking at number 2, totals 1,140,000.

As things stand today, Paradize is considered one of the masterpieces of French-language rock, and this writer has no arguments against that theory. From its triumphant tour comes the double live album 3.6.3 (2004), which between CD and DVD sells 170,000 copies, curiously becoming the band's first album to reach number 1, twenty-two years after their debut.

Alice & June (2005)

A new drummer, François Soulier, makes his debut on this hour-and-a-half-long, twenty-two-track concept album. Introspection, social critique and "Alice in Wonderland"-style hallucinations blend together to tell the story of two teenage girls who died by suicide. The sound has been smoothed out, shifting toward an indie-rock with tight rhythms and post-punk basslines, not far from what's developing across the Channel at the same time, but with more varied arrangements than average and a majestic production.

The band's reach exceeds its grasp, but amid the avalanche of material there are several memorable moments: the contrast between ecstatic vocals and swirling guitars on "Les portes du soir", reminiscent of the Bunnymen; the breathless sprint of the title track, a centerpiece of many concerts from then on; "Gang Bang", a pornographic metaphor that's actually a love story; "Ladyboy", which marks the moment when Alice and June decide to live together and defy the world around them (the arrangement accordingly leans on subtly disturbing elements aimed at creating a sense of unease, like the piano's off-key notes and the relentlessly repeating children's choir). The ballad "Pink Water 3" isn't among the best, but it's much talked about because of Brian Molko's participation (consider that in France Placebo are far more successful than in Britain).

The album goes to number 1 and sells 340,000 copies. Its tour yields two double live albums: Hanoï (2007, number 1, 100,000 copies), featuring a symphony orchestra, and Alice & June Tour (2007, number 15, 90,000 copies).

La république des meteors (2009)

This is the revised, no-frills version of the previous record, a one-of-a-kind alternative rock fresco where the guitars generate an incessant wall of sound, set apart each time by the most varied instruments (besides keyboards and string quartets, you can hear ukulele, toy piano, bandoneón and xylophone). The symphonic energy and melodic richness of these songs have very few equals in English-language rock of the 2000s.

Keyboardist François Matuszenski, a new addition to the lineup, stands out immediately by composing the cadenced little chamber pop gem "Le lac", later released as a single. The rest of the tracklist, however, is dominated by Olivier's arrangements and Nicola's tragic atmospheres, as he was struck by reading a series of anonymous letters written by young soldiers during the First World War. The theme of separation and the backdrop of war are thus recurring both in the lyrics and in the music videos, built from archival footage of 1914-18.

The electric bomb "Go Rimbaud, Go!" is dedicated to one of the most celebrated travelers in French culture, the poet maudit who spent much of his life away from home; "Little Dolls" tells, right from its title, of the condition of soldiers, worthless puppets fighting for causes that aren't their own, while the instruments surge torrentially (the anvil-like drums, the epic piano progression, the minimalist background choirs); the martial folk of "Le grand soir" recounts Christmas Eve as seen through the eyes of a boy who has just killed an enemy in battle ("E i miei vent'anni sono morti qui, e i miei vent'anni sono morti qui con lui"). Driven by a fine synth riff, "Play Boy" eases the tension by returning to the adolescent sentiments so dear to Nicola, while "L World" is dedicated to his ex-partner, opening and closing like an intimate vignette, except for stepping on the gas with the guitars in the middle two minutes.

There is, however, one track that stands out above the rest, "Un ange à ma table", a duet with the little-known Suzanne Combo. It's the story of a couple separated by war, with the soldier at the front lost in memories and his beloved, left behind in a country now inhabited only by women and the elderly, watching the days go by all the same and motionless, slowly convincing herself that he's dead. The menacing string progressions, the tight rhythm, the synths blasting at full volume one moment and shattering into a thousand streams the next, the overlapping voices, the thick layers of guitar, all of it helps magnify the drama being told.

The album enters at number 2 and sells 280,000 copies, but what best conveys the popularity of this new chapter is the tour that follows, which obliterates every possible record on French soil. Its peak is the concert at the Stade de France on June 26, 2010, which yields the live album Putain de stade (2011, number 2 and 60,000 copies). The accompanying DVD is one of the most magnificent visual documents in the history of rock and contains what is effectively the best concert the band has ever given, a two-and-a-half-hour musical juggernaut.

Black City Parade (2013)

Having finally found the perfect formula, the band carves out a space independent from the trends around it, a sort of perpetual motion machine of the most refined rock. And after years, it returns to the center of controversy because of the video for "College Boy", directed by Xavier Dolan. Struck by the film "Les amours imaginaires", Nicola wanted the young Canadian director to helm a clip for the band. The two get in touch and communicate by email during production. They would only meet in person after the single's release.

"College Boy" is the latest anthem against bullying and discrimination, particularly in schools, a scourge that continues to claim victims every year, which Dolan portrays through scenes of parosxysmal violence, complete with a crucifixion, a firing squad, and blindfolded adults pretending not to see. Nicola sings "Comprendo che è dura essere diversi, per questa gente/ Quando sarò sicuro di me, un po' meno fragile, funzionerà", while a powerful synthetic rock sound unfolds in continuous melodic evolutions, with at least four distinct segments building toward a symphonic crescendo. "Memoria", the other single, also relies entirely on accumulation, rising from a solemn electric organ before erecting a wall of electric riffs, acoustic textures, and simulated Gregorian chant.

Worth noting are the moments that flirt once again with dance music, such as "Belfast" and the title track, but the peak is perhaps "Le fond de l'air est rouge", a title borrowed from the film by Chris Marker, which opens with an ethereal female lament and rises into a new, desperate cry against a world that fails to respect minorities: “E noi lassù, e tutti i nostri vascelli, il giorno sarà rosso/ E poi lassù, sfidare il cielo e tutte le bandiere/ Marceremo insieme, noi angeli malvagi, noi disonorati/ La vita non ci toccherà…”.

Songs like these explain the sense of protection and community that Indochine have generated ever since "3ème sexe", and it's admirable to see how, after more than thirty years of career, Nicola is still willing to put himself in uncomfortable positions just to offer support, even if only symbolic, to those who follow his work. That's why their concerts draw such a cross-generational, cross-style, cross-class audience.

The album goes to number 1 and sells 220,000 copies, and the tour that follows matches the previous one, with two consecutive sold-out shows at the Stade de France. Some artists sell more records than Indochine in France, but none draw bigger crowds live, and the reason is easy to explain: shows that never run under two hours, often well over two and a half, played by seasoned musicians, with a frontman who seems to have made a pact with the devil, a setlist spanning four decades of French popular culture, and new songs able to stand up to the classics (something that can be said of very few artists in the world, especially among those who debuted back in the early Eighties).

Once again, two double albums come out of this: Black City Tour (2014, number 10, 60,000 copies) and Black City Concerts (2015, number 25, 80,000 copies).

13 (2017)

Soulier and Matuszenski are no longer part of the lineup, while Swedish drummer Ludwig Dahlberg, previously a founding member of International Noise Conspiracy, steps in. These are shifts that no longer move the creative axis by an inch: Sirkis and Gérard write and produce the album together.

"La vie est belle", the album's lead single, was written together with Mickaël Furnon, who has stayed in touch with the band over the years. The verse builds tension through the absence of the rhythm section, before releasing into a softer-toned chorus. The elegant interlocking arrangements of arpeggiated electric guitar, synths, and backing vocals polish off the mosaic, making it one of the finest anthems of Indochine's mature period.

The guise the band chooses this time to stay vital is a partial return to its roots. True, what resounds across these fifteen tracks isn't just a summary of Eighties pop, but also draws on the epic, narcotic tendencies of the more recent Anglo-American synth school.

So, on "Henry Danger" it feels like drowning in the narcotic sounds of Crystal Castles, while the mechanical grandeur of songs like "2033", "Station 13" or "Kimono dans l'ambulance" recalls the likes of Electric Youth, Glass Candy, Hurts, and in general that movement crystallized in the soundtrack of Nicolas Winding Refn's film "Drive".

Indochine's songwriting, however, is more inspired than that of the bands mentioned above, to the point that the songs are left free to flow for several minutes without ever sounding tired (just think of the flawless symphonic crescendo of "Black Sky" or the constant micro-variations in the vocals of the aforementioned "Kimono…").

Some details are astonishing in their craftsmanship: "Un été français" and "Song For A Dream" feature the same chord progression, simply shifted by a couple of semitones, yet they sound nothing alike. The former is a dreamy indie pop number built on a driving jangle guitar riff, the latter a masterclass pop song, skillfully handling the dynamics between a soft, piano-led verse, a pre-chorus flooded with massive power chords, and a liberating, New Order-esque guitar theme in the chorus.

Worth mentioning is the participation of Asia Argento, who directs the dramatic video for "La vie est belle" and sings on "Gloria", the longest track on the album.

The album enters at number 1 and stays on the charts for a long time, selling half a million copies. The band that lived twice seems, in short, far from having exhausted its potential.

Thanks to Adrian Vaindoit for his extensive advice, and to Giacomo Rivoira, whose review for Ondarock the description of the album “13” was based on

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