Gaëtan Roussel and Arnaud Samuel with Robin Feix form the group Louise Attaque or the crazy story of a French pop rock group that started on the benches of high school. From his beginnings in the garage of one of its members, and the sale of eight cassettes, it is his indisputable stage presence that made him immediately adopted by a fascinated public. Their titles became hits almost immediately: like the three million copies sold of their first eponymous album, released in 1997. In April 2022, they created a surprise with free concerts to celebrate with this same public the 25 years of this first disc. Within minutes, the dates were full.
Louise Attaque marks the blow again by releasing a new album, this Friday, November 4, 2022, Earth.
franceinfo: Earth is a title that finally says a lot about your concerns for each other, but above all the texts are really built around the human.
Gaetan Roussel: Yes quite. Around the human, around the invisible threads that bind all humans and that bind us all as much as we are. Without any particular message or moralization or anything, but yes, human. So much the better if this disc is human. We hope, we have done everything to make it happen.
Is there a magic recipe or not? Because when you listen to this album, it’s Louise Attaque that doesn’t age.
Arnaud Samuel: It must be our group sensitivity in fact. When we talk about the texts, indeed, these texts have a rather humanistic view of planet Earth. This is Louise’s view of this planet.
The texts of this album are carried by the music that we compose together and I think that the melodies and the texts form a whole, which is our sensitivity as a group in relation to the world in which we live.
Arnaud Samuel, from the group Louise Attaqueat franceinfo
I have the impression that everything is represented in this writing, Gaëtan, you have always had this sensitivity.
Gaetan Roussel: I hope. We hope to talk about what surrounds us. We hope to do it, as Arnaud says, with our sensitivity. And that is a joy. Me, I’m happy to find the sound, for example of Arnaud’s violin that I don’t come across when I make so-called “solo” records, so it’s a joy. Inevitably, it shifts you, inevitably, it leads you elsewhere. And it is this elsewhere which is always interesting and which is a permanent quest, in my opinion, of each one of us on this planet Earth and which is therefore also ours. And when we got together, that was what we were looking at. We hope we got somewhere, of course.
It’s funny by the way, because the first single you gave us was a bit of a response to I bring you with wind. Is that right, Louise Attaque, is it first and foremost a family story?
Gaetan Roussel: It’s a group story, it’s a story of honesty, between us, and afterwards, if it transpires and if it creates other things and benevolence, between what we receive and what we try to give, something quite true, quite frank, so much the better. We have always tried to have a sound that is quite frank, quite free, quite spontaneous. So if all that creates the fact that people want to listen, that they find that, we are happy. We do our best, we don’t say that we can do it, we do our best not to cheat with this element which anyway, at some point, escapes us. We play it and then it goes away like that and that’s good.
There is also a passion for living in writing, an urgency. We, we want to live, you say that this album effectively tells what lies behind the success of Louise Attaque. Men determined to enjoy life, to face difficulties, to face the winds, the eddies. More than yesterday, you have this need to live, to enjoy life.
Arnaud Samuel: You have to live passionately.
Everyone must live passionately. This is the only universal message that we can wish for human beings.
Arnaud Samuel, from the group Louise Attaqueat franceinfo
Gaetan Roussel: Yes, because we are lucky to have felt good, that’s it. And I think it’s not just in the moment, it all stems from what we did the day before and the day before and the day before. And there, we managed to understand each other, but the three of us, with Arnaud and Robin, managed to understand when we can be together, when we can’t be and that makes us very free within Louise Attaque. What is important is that we are at 100% and that is what is important.
Songs like hymns, Arnaud, still in this album. In We won’t be afraid of anythingwe talk about the couple, we talk about the passing years, the passing of time, but also about the solidity of a couple.
Arnaud Samuel: In any case, fervor is very important because it gives us back a hundredfold what we try to give to people. Of course it’s always a compliment to say that a song becomes an anthem… But it’s our cry from the heart right now, personal, as a group in relation to the world in which we live and we want to share with others. The impetus is there.
“One for all! All for one“, is there always this Musketeers side, Arnaud, in Louise Attaque?
Arnaud Samuel: So the definition of our group is 1+1=1.
Louise Attaque will be on tour: March 16, 2023 in Lyon, 17 in Dijon, 20 in Nantes, 21 in Rouen, 29 in Paris etc.