From the opening notes of the title track on Dominique A's new album, you know the king of minimalist French pop has waved goodbye to musical austerity and opened a radical new chapter in his career. All fifteen tracks on Tout sera comme avant, feature elegant and even, at times, elaborate arrangements, strings, keyboards and a vibrant brass section weaving themselves around Dominique A's haunting vocals. Fans used to the singer's moody minimalism will be surprised by this revolution in his sound (hitherto more akin to indie UK or US productions). The reason for this ground-breaking change of style is quite simple. Dominique A's sixth album was masterminded by a French producer, Jean Lamoot (famous for his work with French stars Bashung, Les Valentins and Noir Désir).

"I didn't spend too long time musing over who to work with this time round," Dominique A admits, "I went straight for Jean Lamoot and his team. I knew I wanted to work with a French-speaking team again because I find that makes the music more accessible. But the other thing was I'd been really blown away by Bashung's last album, L’Imprudence (produced by Jean Lamoot). And I have to say, apart from a handful of sound engineer friends I'd worked with in the past, there really weren't that many people in France I felt like trying to work with. It was really important to me to try and find people with a totally different musical culture to my own. What happened was we tried out a few tracks last summer and when that turned out OK we went ahead and made the whole album together."

Deciding to go out on a limb and try something entirely different with Tout sera comme avant, Dominique accepted to hand over the creative reins on this album and surrender control for the first time in his career. "To begin with, I wasn't convinced about the idea of using more arrangementsin my work," he confesses, "I wasn't sure whether my voice would find its place in all that or not. I've always performed a bit of a balancing act between different formats, working solo or as part of a group and experimenting with more or less minimalist sounds. But this time round, I think I dared to take things a bit further. I think the thing that maybe triggered that off was when I did the cover of the Léo Ferré song for the Ferré tribute album that came out just before last summer. It was a very liberating experience because I really allowed myself to let go on that song, accepting I was simply a performer interpreting someone else's words. I felt completely at ease in the studio, as if I'd taken a step back from what I was singing and got a bit of distance from things like a 'variété' artist."

This artistic act of 'letting go' has enabled Dominique A to move on and stop working over the same old musical ground. His vocals not only assume a more flamboyant style on his new album, but he broadens the horizons of his musical universe too, experimenting with the sound of a saw on Dans Les Hommes and introducing the chimes of Chinese handbells on Les Clés. Lamoot's accomplices, Arnaud Devos and Jean-Louis Solans, go in for fully orchestrated numbers, but vary their arrangements throughout the album (thus breaking with Dominique A's systematic approach in the past). These arrangements bring out the haunting melancholy of a song like Elle Parle A Des gens Qui Ne Sont Pas Là, but also work well on lighter numbers such as L’Inuktitut (a sarcastic diatribe about English taking over the world) and La Retraite A Miami (an ironic-kitsch ditty about retirement).

Inevitably, the shadow of Bashung hovers over Dominique A's album at times (the singer having even gone so far as to recruit Bashung's drummer and bass-player, Martyn Baker and Simon Edwards for his studio sessions). But the most obvious influence on Tout sera comme avant is undoubtedly Léo Ferré. A song like Revenir Au Monde is a veritable musical and poetic masterpiece on which Dominique A's vocals soar in true French 'chanson' style, assuming the dramatic delivery of late 'chanson' greats such as Brel and Barbara. As for the themes on Dominique A's new album, these tend to revolve around old favourites such as solitude, painful reunions between old friends and lovers and the impossibility of communication. In short, Tout sera comme avant finds the singer back on his old quest searching for the truth about human relationships and the meaning of existence.

Dominique A may avoid using overblown literary language in his songs, but he makes no secret of his voracious appetite for reading. And with his new album he decided to bring the worlds of novel-writing and songwriting together, inviting a group of French authors (including Richard Morgiève, Hélène Lenoir, Arnaud Cathrine and Chloé Delaume) to pen texts inspired by his song titles. "The idea sprang from the fact that somewhere down the line I feel I owe a huge debt to literature," says Dominique, "I've borrowed so much from literature in the past – and sometimes in the most shameless way – that I felt like I wanted to give something back for a change. Although, having said that, I realise there are some debts you can never repay! … The idea of giving the song titles to authors came about very simply, because I've come to meet a lot of authors over the years and I've struck up friendships with some of them. I'm a big reader and I've always been fascinated by the literary world. But something I've come to realise over the years is that authors actually admire songwriters, too. So that made it easier to approach the authors involved in this project. It was interesting to see what they came up given just one word or phrase. Some titles ended up working better than others, but we worked on the principle that we'd accept everything and publish all the texts as a collection of short stories. The collection's called Tout Sera Comme Avant just like the album. The thing that struck me most at the end of the day is that I'd originally thought there'd be certain correspondences between the texts and the songs. But that didn't actually happen once!"

Dominique A admits to having had a few qualms about his radical change of direction on Tout sera comme avant, confessing his one fear when he went into the studio was that "my new clothes would be too big for me!" But the singer can reassure himself as he hits the road on a national tour. His new songs fit him like a glove!

Marion