(Paris) Louise Attaque celebrates the 25th anniversary of her first album, with a reissue and a day-event to make the successes resonate Your invitation Where I bring you with winda piece described by the group as its “passport to the party”.
Posted at 10:57 a.m.
“Cardio test”
For this quarter of a century, the Parisian formation is releasing its first eponymous album on Friday, with, among other things, a collector’s version in a 28-page hardcover book. And on April 26, Louise Attaque will play six times in the same day at the Élysée Montmartre in Paris. A good “cardio test” is having fun with AFP Gaëtan Roussel, singer and guitarist.
Places for these free concerts have sold out on registration. The 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m., 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. shows are in public, not the 7 p.m. live stream for those who cannot come. “We want to say thank you to the people who have allowed us to live this adventure for 25 years, and when we celebrate our birthday, we invite people”, unfolds the leader.
“Louise represents us”
On the album cover, there is the face of a little girl with big eyes drawn in broad strokes by bassist Robin Feix. The name Louise Attaque is a convoluted reference to a beloved American group, Violent Femmes. “From the name came the idea that Louise is a character who represents us, we wanted the music to be embodied, but not by us on the cover,” Robin Feix told AFP.
The concept is pushed very far. “Louise had a very practical side, it was she who wrote directly to the owners of venues and bars where we wanted to play, in the style of a 7-year-old girl,” he confides. “Louise asked them, for example, in her letter if her friends could come and play with her that day”.
“One Classified Ad”
A little piece of paper changes everything. “I had another band, but we couldn’t make it and one day there was this ad left in a rehearsal studio, they had left only one ad my mates told me later,” recalls for AFP the violinist Arnaud Samuel.
“French rock group is looking for a violinist, good level, references Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Violent Femmes, contact Robin”, he recites.
“It’s a chance that we came across Arnaud”, continues Gaëtan Roussel. “The first time he rehearsed with us, he started playing on Loves and Parisian nights and he finds his place, we weren’t looking for a soloist, but a counter-melody”, describes the singer, who savors the “alchemy” born that day.
“Passport to the Party”
Louise Attaque swallows the scenes before releasing her record. “We wanted to play very quickly live by saying to ourselves “we will go to the public and they will come to us”, we wanted to do a “max” of concerts even in small places at the beginning”, underlines Arnaud Samuel.
While no song came out, I bring you with wind hooks the audience. “In the bars, we played it three or four times a night, we used it to set the mood, we saw that it was going straight, people went home knowing the words,” explains Robin Feix. “This song was our passport to the party we were going to do next”.
“Help us be ourselves”
Louise Attaque clashes in the 1990s with a rock spirit in an acoustic packaging. “A very bare style, quite rough in the delivery of the songs”, summarizes Gaëtan Roussel.
Marc Thonon, then at the head of the Atmospheric label, had the intelligence not to want to coat their music with effects. He accepts their request to be produced by Gordon Gano, leader of the Violent Femmes. “He was the perfect producer, he used our flaws to make it look like us, Gordon understood that we just had to help us stay ourselves”, greets Gaëtan Roussel. Jackpot, the record has sold more than 3 million copies.