By Chantal Hadley The nouvelle scène is, well, pretty self explanatory. It’s new: many of the bands in it have only released their debut albums within the last year. It definitely falls under the umbrella of rock music. And it’s French.Musically, the genre is pretty standard: you’ve got guitars, screaming vocals (which somehow seem less abrasive with the unaspirated aitches of a French accent), lots of guitars and a good solid drum beat. Synths play a pretty big part and the scène owes a lot to Daft Punk, Cassius, and other French dance music of the late 90s. Pravda’s ‘Je Suis French (Do not Touch)’ plays around with mechanising the human voice and has a slightly Stephen Hawking quality to it. Naast go one step further and their bassist Clod Naast (né Claude, naturellement) also plays the Hammond Organ. The fast-paced shouting match which is ‘Je Te Cherche’ has a brief respite in the form of carnival-esque organ-playing before Gustave Naast resumes yelling that he’s looking for you.Lyrically, many of the songs are just as full of attitude as the gutsy electric guitar riffs would have you believe. Common themes focus on defining their own generation and lashing out against artificial social stereotyping and pigeonholing. Pravda especially, in their songs ‘Je Suis French (Do Not Touch)’ and ‘A L’Ouest’ follow this pattern. Even on a basic grammatical level, there’s a lot of “je suis…” being thrown around. ‘Je Suis French…’ also shows the genre’s double-edged sword: they seem to want to retain their intrinsic frenchness, but with the music market, even in France, being monopolised by international artists, they don’t have a choice. At the very least, their easy command of two languages, often switching between French and English in the middle of songs, is impressive. Pravda’s myspace list them as being an Indie band and although Naast sometimes sound a bit like (and have similar haircuts to…) The Fratellis or The White Stripes I wouldn’t go so far as to equating the whole genre with them. Naast (Mauvais Garçon) and Les Plasticines (Zazie Fait La Bicyclette) are 1960s-inspired in many ways, but Pravda leans more towards electronica. The nouvelle scène likes to define itself, but I think perhaps it is still so nouvelle that it isn’t really sure what it wants to be yet. At any rate, the eldest member of Naast is 18, and Les Plasticines were all born in 1988, so the genre has plenty of time to grow into the shoes of rock française.
Genre Bending: La Nouvelle Scène Rock Française
