What do you do if youve got the tunes and the look, but cant get gigs? Frances hottest band relive their ingenious $3,000 gamble
Its hard to imagine a more French version of a rocknroll band than La Femme. For all that their second album, Mystre, one of the years best, is wholly accessible and dripping with fantastic tunes, it exudes a sense of cool that indie bands rarely manage any more. It tries on a wardrobe of different clothes psychedelia, surf rock, electronica, krautrock and more and ends up looking fantastic in all of them. It sounds chic.
Its also made La Femme proper pop stars in France. As their manager guides me into a brasserie in StrasbourgSaint-Denis, their home turf in Paris, hes clutching a copy of Les Inrockuptibles, Frances leading pop culture magazine, to hand to the bands masterminds, Marlon Magne and Sacha Got. La Femme are on the cover, although theres a certain amount of eyebrow-raising about the fact that the only person pictured is their singer, Clmence Qulennec. Its like a Vogue cover, Magne observes.
He likes to smoke crazy weed and take a bunch of drugs, says Magne. Before the show begins, he listens to the album and dances everywhere. At which point Magne in so far as he can while cramped into a tiny booth in a crowded brasserie, with his lunch in front of him and a bottle of red on the table mimes someone dancing in the manner of a deranged ostrich. Sometimes I have to speak to him. Look, George, I know youre very happy to be here, but people think youre weird. And if youre too weird, theyre going to kick you out.
Keyboard-player Magne and guitarist Got met at secondary school in Biarritz, near the Spanish border, where summer is alive with holidaymakers and winter is dead. Theres little in the way of live music and nothing much else to do. There are four bars at a junction where everyone goes to drink, Magne says. But we dont like it too much, because if you are dressed too rocknroll or too hipster or too trendy they call you a fag. So its a bit hard to grow up in Biarritz if you are really different.
As soon as they could, the pair moved to Paris to dream up a band. Their first, the unpromisingly named SS Mademoiselle, collapsed because their singer only wanted to practise one day a week. And so they formed La Femme, a group that would be, as Magne puts it: Velvet Underground or Kraftwerk-style. Very mysterious. They were listening to French underground from the 60s, and French synthwave from the 70s. They also knew their group had to look great. We always said that if we had a band, it had to be fucking cool, Magne says.
Sound and look in place, there were only two problems remaining: nowhere to play, and no interest in them. They emailed 50 clubs in Paris asking for gigs, and got just two answers. At the first, the stage was so small the bass player had to stand at the back of the crowd with the sound engineer, plugged into the mixing desk. They had only eight songs and, because some of the crowd had turned up late, they went back to the beginning of the set when they had finished and just started over.
We went to US with $3,000 each and this girl found us 20 gigs, Magne says. In France at the same moment, our EP was released. So the industry was like, What the fuck? They have an EP out and they are touring in the US and we dont know them? So the buzz began to start. When we came back to France, it was red carpet. Fucking DIY.
They were duly signed to Universals French imprint, Barclay former home to Charles Aznavour and Jacques Brel. Their debut album, Psycho Tropical Berlin, reached No 33 in France, and La Femme were on their way, taking any opportunity that came along soundtracking Yves Saint Laurents catwalk show, performing at Austin Psych fest, in Texas, where Magne looked like anything but a YSL muse.
I was almost naked, he says, with a huge witchs hat and a kimono. Crikey. In Texas? Is he sure he didnt look like a Ku Klux Klan recruit? He ponders for a moment. No. I looked like Merlin. It was so magical. I was so happy. Like the sun shining everywhere.
La Femme play <a href=”https://www.academymusicgroup.com/o2shepherdsbushempire/events/789901/la-femme-tickets” data-link-name=”in” body link” class=”u-underline”>Shepherds Bush Empire, London, on 17 November. Michael Hanns travel was paid by Disque Pointu.