Maybe it's Tryo's love of Roots and Ballade en forêt (Forest Walks), that led to the group nipping out from their studio for a lunchtime picnic in the park. Taking a break from rehearsals for their upcoming tour, Tryo take obvious delight in munching their sandwiches on a park bench while inhaling the loamy smell of the earth. Up until now the group have preferred to create most of their songs live on stage. But for their new album, Grain de sable, Tryo abandoned their bucolic studio in the Landes (where they recorded their first two albums) and chose to concoct their new songs in a Parisian studio.
After a brief experimentation with bossa, Afro-Brazilian influences and accordion on their last album Faut qu'ils s'activent, Tryo have returned to the sound that made their name – i.e. superbly-arranged songs with militant lyrics "that you can sing in the shower!" Tryo, who began life as a teenage band, have matured in recent years (and one of them recently became a father). After touring abroad and selling some 900,000 albums, the group are now back in the news with Grain de sable, an album on which they share their discontent with international events (Dans un nuage, G8), the media (Sortez-les) and rising unemployment figures (Comme les journée sont longues). But at the end of the day Tryo's life-affirming message is: "Reality is what you make of it!"

How do you go about preparing for a long tour after having been locked away working on your album?
Well, for the first time in our career we've decided to have a month of serious rehearsals this time round. Up until now playing live has always been more or less a matter of improvisation for us. On our previous albums – even the second one which we worked on more in the studio than the first one – we tended to think about the songs in terms of how we'd play them live, including long intros and stuff. But this time round we worked in a very different way. The album's in the same spirit as the previous ones but I think it's a lot richer. All we've got to do now is make sure we get that richness across on stage. There are a lot of things on the new album that we like but which didn't come from us – and that's led to us working on the live versions in a new way so that we don't move too far away from what's on the album!

I know that during the recording of the new album you worked with a professional singing teacher and a producer. Do you think that brought a new edge to your sound?
I think our singing teacher, Hélène Bohy, made us do things we'd never have dared to do on our own. On previous albums we'd supervised the vocal side of things ourselves. Basically, when one of us was recording the others would go and sit the other side of the glass and take the piss out of him! It was good to work with someone neutral like Hélène. I think it gave us more confidence in ourselves. She got things out of us that even surprised ourselves at times. Hélèné also got us to understand the differences between our individual voices and helped us use them in a better way. That really helped when it came to choosing the right backing vocalists this time and with Hélène's help we also came to realise there was no use in forcing our voices into registers that didn't suit them. You know, like singing yourself hoarse trying to do the high notes when you've basically got a bass voice. I think we all sound more comfortable with our voices on the new album. That's something you hear immediately.

Were there any significant changes to your songwriting this time round?
I think we've all evolved a lot as far as songwriting goes, even though we're still pretty militant. When we recorded the first album we'd just come out of adolescence really, so I think one thing you can say about the lyrics today is that they're a bit more mature. But if I had to pin them down I'd say they're still written in the spirit of Desproges and Coluche. They're still essentially Tryo!

There's a certain broadening of horizons on your new album though. It feels a bit more international, a bit more influenced by what you've been reading, for instance…
Yes, I think you're right. We've been travelling around a bit lately and I think we've tried to open up to new things too… We went out to play in Sudan at one point and in Egypt too. International events have also made a major impact on us, like the war in Iraq, for instance, and what happened in Genoa… There's a song on our new album, Pompafric, that was directly influenced by the work of Survival International and their various publications.

Tryo seem to have had an uncanny sixth sense in the past. On one of your old songs, Les extrêmes, you raised the problem of election abstention and the rise of radical political parties. And that's exactly what came to pass at the last French presidential elections…
Yes, and that's why we intend to keep on playing Les extrêmes at our live gigs! Like a lot of other French people at the last elections we were forced to vote for a right-wing candidate to keep out the far-right. But that doesn't mean we gave the right a mandate to push through the new laws they're voting in on pensions and national security… There's a song on the new album called Récréaction (Play Time). It's about education which couldn't be more of a topical issue in France right now… We can't wait to go out and play that one live on stage!