Comebacks are all the rage on the French music scene right now. The vogue was launched three years ago by veteran crooner Henri Salvador who made a surprise comeback after several years' absence from the recording front with his best-selling album Chambre avec vue. Now Indochine have reinvented themselves as comeback kings, proving that far from being washed-up old rockers as their harshest critics once described them, they still have what it takes to top the charts and rack up six-figure album sales!

Many are those who predicted the demise of Indochine once the group had been reduced to its founding member, lead singer Nicola Sirkis. But Sirkis managed to save Indochine from the wreckage and re-emerge Phoenix-like with a new line-up and a new album, Paradize. Despite the fact that Indochine's latest studio album featured contributions from the crème de la crème of the music scene (including Jean-Louis Murat, Mickey 3D and Melissa Auf Der Maur), no-one saw the industrial rock-influenced opus as a winner.

"When we presented the album to our record company two years ago," Sirkis recalls, "half the people in the room looked scared out of their wits. They said it was 'spe' - which in their jargon means 'rock-specialised!' They estimated we'd sell about 80,000 copies." Sirkis smiles quietly to himself at this point, before adding, "But we've actually managed to sell more albums now than we did in our 80s heyday!"

The release of Paradize happened to coincide with a generalised return of rock guitars on the French music scene. And Indochine's album became an overnight hit, turning everything it touched to gold. Not content with garnering rave reviews from the critics, Paradize went on to scoop a host of prestigious awards including a coveted "Victoire de la musique" and a trophy at the NRJ Music Awards. Sirkis was circumspect about cashing in too much on the comeback craze, however, admitting "at one point we decided to stop commercialising the single J'ai demandé à la lune" because we felt selling a million copies was more than enough! That wasn't our aim, our aim was to present a new album."

While remaining modest about their phenomenal sales figures, the group nevertheless punctuated their French tour in June 2003 with a gig in Paris at Bercy Stadium, the very symbol of mainstream success. This went down in music history as the first time a French rock group had packed out Bercy – so it seemed fitting the concert was recorded for posterity and released as a live album!

Indochine, who have a long history of being at their best live on stage, are in transcendent form on 3.6.3., serving up a no-holds barred concert that remained true to the spirit of their last studio album. With feedback squealing from the speakers and guitar riffs crashing centre stage, Sirkis bounded around sparking juvenile energy, his performance defying the limits of age. 3.6.3. provides fans with a faithful reworking of the tracks on Paradize, on-stage verve and adrenalin adding an extra edge at times. The live album also offers a few choice moments where the band rerun the soundtrack of their old hits, playing a medley of Canary Bay, Les tzars and Fleurs pour Salinger. Early Indochine hits have certainly withstood the test of time, delighting fans from the 80s as well as new admirers from the Mickey 3D generation.

All in all, two hours of superb pop'n'rock on a double album that sets out to recreate the raw atmosphere of a live gig in listeners' homes. "We set out with the intention of doing a totally live album!" declares Sirkis. And that's exactly what the group did, refusing to clean up the rough edges for public consumption. "We actually spent over two months in the studio mixing the CD," explains Sirkis, "but there was no touching anything up. 99% of live albums that hit the stores have had vocals reworked on one track and guitar on another. And that's perfectly normal. We've had recourse to that in the past ourselves because there were times when my voice went off the rails and there were problems with the sound. But we were blessed by the gods at Bercy. And as there was no major catastrophe we decided to keep everything exactly as it was!"

This warts-and-all policy makes for a rawer-than-raw serving on 3.6.3. and Indochine's art of noise will certainly not appeal to those with sensitive ears. But Nicola Sirkis appears decidedly unbothered about that. "A lot of people have complained about the sound on the new album and it is pretty raw, I must admit. But it's a live album! It was recorded in concert not in some studio. And you get to hear the audience as well as us. We could obviously have done a more sanitized version of it, but frankly that wasn't what interested us!" Rough, raw and very rock'n'roll, perhaps 3.6.3. could best be described as the official Bercy bootleg!

Indochine 3.6.3. (Columbia) 2004