He walks through Paris, with a step that we can guess is light. He comes from France 2 where he was the guest of the news, it took time, all the commotion: on TV, it’s TV that decides. We feel relieved, hello Quebec. Relaxed land, free accent. “I want to make you talk, you!” exclaims Thomas Dutronc when the time comes for our round of questions. Promo of new album obliges. Nice positive title: It’s never too late. A funny album that evokes past loves, could be a tad melancholic and a bit sad, but it is not. Not for a moment do we dwell on it. On the contrary, we lighten up. Better, we free ourselves. “I succeeded in my mission, then! Great!”
You might think he’s joking around and congratulating himself, Dutronc style. But no, he’s really happy. Genuinely delighted, you can hear it. “I think I’m lucky to be doing this great job that I’m passionate about…” He’s as excited about the process as a kid who finds his sandbox again. Nine years after the previous disc of original content, a big hiatus where there was Frenchy, the compilation of covers in international duets, and then the unexpected “general tour” with his father flushed out of his Corsica, and then the accompaniment of his mother, Françoise Hardy, so suffering in her last years, the time had come to exist for himself and to start writing again. Like at the beginning, in 2007, wow! “Making these songs was like playtime. A game. My friend David Chiron would come to me with new melodies, and I would look for words, like that, in the evening. There were evenings when I couldn’t find anything, but sometimes, there were a few, little ones, that opened the door to a story that I wanted to tell.” A joy, every time.
Do not spread it out in broad daylight
No question of playing the big mourner. It belongs to her, not to us. “I’m going to stop talking about my mother a bit. People talked to me about her a lot, and I responded nicely, because I’m someone who trusts, a priori. But there, in France, there are a lot of people who took my comments out of context, who made somewhat slutty headlines, that’s the side people that I have always tried to avoid.” Ugly hopscotch of less well-intentioned media pedestrians, the recess of the sweet and tender songs of the new album has been transformed into chalk tracings like those seen in police investigations. “I prefer that people listen to me for my guitar and my little songs.”
If we stick to our guns, he readily admits the maternal reference in The horoscopea lovely song written by her friend Antoine Laurain. Astrology was, so to speak, Françoise Hardy’s second job. During interviews, like Thomas at the beginning of our conversation, she was the one asking questions and drawing the interlocutor’s sky map. At the end of the Zoom audio, her son laughs. A happy wink. “Of course I thought about it. I was seduced by this text imbued with a nobility of writing.” And yes, he grew up with astrology. “There were dinners with his astrologer friends. It pissed us off a bit, my father and I, but…” He bursts out laughing. We can see the scene from here. A lovely memory of happy times.
Big pun, big fun
There is, in fact, some Dutronc-stamped humor everywhere in this album. Notably in Marilouwritten by Thomas with Arnaud Garoux, another friend from a long time ago (“this album is really a reunion of friends from college”), where the game consists of making puns huge from “girls’ names” one day crossed and written in the phone: “There’s Hannah from the café downstairs / But of all of them, Hannah is the worst”. That tone. “It’s kind of my natural niche. I like to mess around. Marilouit’s an idea that had been running through my head for a long time. I had found “my Christelle ball”, it made me laugh. So, we found loads of them. ” “Eléonore she is in the West / And I had to refuse Ariane”: he laughs, is surprised that we know about the Ariane rocket in Quebec.
In need of a good chorus
All of this works, the sweet songs, the tender ones, the funny ones, because they are solidly constructed. Thomas Dutronc is not just a gypsy guitar ace. With or without David Chiron (and a few others), he knows how to make a song, like they used to make well-made songs. Allow me to repeat it. Keyword: refrain. “A popular song seems very simple, but the ways to get there are endless. That’s why there are legends like David Bowie or the Beatles. It’s very varied, but there’s almost always a refrain. It leads somewhere.” For effectiveness, the song Kathmandu is amazing: the theme of the desire for freedom is combined with excerpts from a nursery rhyme that we can’t help but hum: “Bout de fi- / Celle qui viendra avec moi / Partagera mon toit / Toile à matelas”. We can’t resist.
In Letting go of lovesa true pop song, the melody literally weighs anchor, and we go from “casting off the moorings” to “casting off the loves”. What Thomas calls fishing for images. “It’s the movement towards the chorus that I like. We’ve changed eras. Finding a riff melodic, it has become a mountain for people. While for me, the pleasure is there, I need verses, a chorus, a bridge, an arrangement. “He is from all eras, Thomas Dutronc: he is from the time of Django, from the time of the Beatles, from the time of Dutronc and Hardy. “From riffscounterpoints, the search for gimmicksfor me, that’s what music is. Yes, I like jazz, I have a great fascination for great instrumentalists, but popular song is also a wonderful place for creation. “Every time an idea arises, a source of joy. This is what Thomas Dutronc sings in Little joysa song firmly planted at the heart of the album: “There are so many tears, so much misfortune / Don’t let the little joys pass you by”.