Following more than three years after Daho’s last album Eden, Corps et armes is infused with everything from pastel-tinted daydreams to full technicolour emotion and brings Daho’s vocals firmly to the fore. Co-produced by Les Valentins - the French rock duo who have been Daho’s loyal companions for many years - Corps et armes also features an English duet with innovative pop talent Vanessa Daou.

We caught up with the king of French pop before the release of his new album and found him serene, relaxed and happier than ever

RFI Musique : Etienne, listeners get to hear your voice a lot more closely on this new album. In fact, there are moments when you even come close to hitting a few off notes ...
Etienne Daho : Well, that’s because of the melodies. The melodies on the new album seem to flow along quite simply and naturally but, in actual fact, they contain a lot of “blue” notes - as they say in the jazz world. I really like the sound of this register but it’s not particularly easy to sing in.
For me, a good singer is someone who knows how to convey emotion in their voice. I mean, the singers I have most respect for - people like Chet Baker and Francoise Hardy - aren’t great singers from a technical point of view. What I love about someone like Aretha Franklin, for example, is that she manages to get this amazingly pure emotion across in her voice. When I came out of university and started singing, my singing voice was exactly the same as my speaking voice. But as the years have gone by and I’ve put out successive albums, I’ve found myself increasingly brought up against vocal limitations which have really begun to bother me. People used to say my voice sounded very Brazilian and over the years I’ve put a lot of time and effort into making my voice more powerful.

When you’re working on an album do you pay a lot of attention to other things which are going on on the music scene at the same time?
Work on my last album, Eden , actually coincided with a period of complete reconstruction in my life. I was living in London at the time and going out a lot at night - this was right at the time when the British electro scene was exploding. And it did end up influencing the album a lot - although it must be said most of the songs on Eden are classic compositions which could just as well be accompanied by piano or guitar. But this time round I can’t say I’ve really been listening to anything else that’s been going on on the music scene. There are a few ambient moments on the new album, a touch of electro here and there because I couldn’t help bringing it in. But Corps et armes is really an orchestral album featuring a full line-up of 50 musicians.

It’s funny but at the end of the day your studio orchestra doesn’t actually sound that “big”. I mean, the orchestral arrangements stay firmly in the background and never get in the way of your voice ...
Will Malone, the arranger on this album, really understood what I was trying to do with the new songs. I asked Will to leave a lot of space around my vocals - which I haven’t always done in the past. On previous albums we got into the habit of making these great backing tracks which used more or less the same frequencies as my voice. But this time round we deliberately wanted to keep the arangements to a strict minimum. I mean, just because you’re working in the Abbey Road studio with a full orchestra doesn’t mean you have to go overboard!

The idea was to keep things simple and fit the arangements around the vocals, keeping them as natural as possible. When it came to mixing the album I got Tom Durack to keep my voice as natural as possible too - we didn’t try to disguise the fragile edge it has from time to time or the bass notes.

This new album finds you hooking up with your old friends Les Valentins ...
Les Valentins - Jean-Louis Pierot and Edith Fambuena - and I discovered each other back in 1987 and since then we’ve worked together a lot. Les Valentins have done a lot of work for singers like Bashung and Brigitte Fontaine and I feel we’ve ended up hooking up together again at exactly the right time. What was really good about working with the pair of them was that they had exactly the same vision of the new album as I did - they were into the idea of emotions, melodies, orchestral arrangements and keeping things really simple. Basically, the idea was to produce this very ‘direct’ album. < p> We worked really fast in the studio and ended up recording the whole thing in three weeks. Then we sifted through what we’d done and ended up eliminating a few tracks. There were certain songs which didn’t really fit in with the general feel of the album. We started out with a lot more songs by Peter and Vanessa Daou, for example, but they sort of pulled the album in a different direction and so I’ve decided to put them on hold for now and use them on a later project ...



Does music totally dominate your life - I mean, do you spend all your free time working on music? Well, when I’m not wrapped up in my own music I’m wrapped up in other people’s. I’m a major ‘consumer’ when it comes to music. Basically, when you’re a songwriter you never stop working, your mind’s always working away absorbing things - even when you’re not aware of it on a conscious level. You soak up a lot of what’s going on around you especially when, like me, you’ve been around for a while. You know, you can spend twenty years making your first album, but when it comes to the second you only take six months. After that you need to nourish yourself with new influences, get away and re-energise yourself.

That’s why I ended up moving to London in 1995. Back then I felt like I’d never be able to write again. I felt like I couldn’t relate to what was going on on the music scene at all and I even got to the point where I felt like I didn’t belong in Paris - or even in my own house! I felt like I’d really lost sight of where I was going.

And how do you feel now?
Right now I feel I’ve got exactly the life I want - which, I can tell you, is a big luxury! It feels good to have been around on the music scene for twenty years and still feel creative. And it’s great to record a new album you feel happy with!