The characters Kent sings about on Bienvenue au Club reveal their qualities as well as their flaws, showing their real side on songs such as Les vraies gens. Other tracks look at life from a female perspective (Beauté Fatale, Nous-mêmes and the cruel Une chose). These are characters who grow old; reach the prime of their lives; who can be positive about things even in their pessimism. The stress of the nineties has given way to a certain wisdom, and as always, Kent's lyrics reflect this sense of serenity, while the music itself is much more instinctive, more edgy, and less intellectual. Paradoxically, Kent came up with the idea of a "club" that blends rock, punk and garage influences while on the acoustic tour of his album Je ne suis qu’une chanson. He'd put on his old leather jacket to go to a few rock concerts and realised that "this is what I wanted to hear. I'd kind of put rock to one side over the past few years." The result is fourteen new songs that were written with a new energy, both during and after the tour. And yet despite the new energy, while writing the album he still remained true to the spirit of (his former group) Starshooter, and other old friends from that time. Laurent Voulzy was the first to offer a song, and Romain Didier soon followed suit. Kent also invited a host of younger artists to participate, including M, Mickey 3D and La Grande Sophie.

Playback Boys: a younger sound

To begin with, sessions with the group Playback Boys were rather muted affairs, with the Boys being over-respectful towards Kent, the veteran poet-rocker. "They thought they were working with an exalted figure with an illustrious past. They even called me by the polite 'vous' form, they'd worked out who I was. They've loosened up now and call me by the more familiar 'tu'. " The young musicians were pretty amazed by the end of recent concerts at the sheer energy of the singer and the swagger with which he swung his guitar: "My son, who's still just a kid, came to see me play. He was surprised and worried to see me cut loose like that. I explained to him that up on stage was the right place to be like that. As for my backing band, they let me know in the nicest possible way that I managed pretty well for an "old guy", and I took that as a compliment. "

Kent and the group do have something of a father-son relationship, although it's a bit more complicated than that. There's a real generational exchange going on, a sharing of experiences from different musical eras. Kent brings his experiences from the punk years and from French chanson, while the Boys offer a freshness and originality. "They don't have the same musical references as me. What I was looking for in the Playback Boys was the unexpected, something very vital. If I'd worked with musicians of my own age, we'd just be playing old-style rock. But I've already done that, so it wasn't the aim of the exercise! I still have a lot of things to learn and as I want to get to grips with the rock music of today, these musicians were ideal." It's been a long time since Kent was the same age as Matthieu Chédid, La Grande Sophie or Mickaël Furnon, and when he straps on his guitar, all the musical references from earlier times come flooding back: "It's disconcerting when I play rock, because all my years of playing guitar come back to me. But with these younger musicians, I just plug in the guitar and they get going, no questions asked. And that's exactly what rock's all about!"

Kent on the radio

The intro to the track Bienvenue au Club – a few chords plucked out on a guitar with a capo, and a heavy bass – set the tone. On Des jours ainsi, the penultimate track on the album, a keyboard run beautifully brings to a close the theme of the club, conceived as a mix of generations that Kent poetically brings to life. "I like to write my songs around runs and riffs. On this album, the idea was to make sure each song could be taken off the album and played on the radio. I hadn't had that kind of approach since Starshooter." The album marks Kent's return to the concept of the singles album. "It feels good, because it's a challenge. It's not a question of doing something that sounds like everything else on the radio, but to make Kent records that are also radio-friendly. The time when I used to do longer songs with a lot of lyrics and changes of atmosphere is over for the moment. But I might go back to it later on." In the meantime, the last track, Le Voyageur, signals a transition towards another genre: world music, which is one of Kent's three musical reference points, the others being rock and traditional French chanson. To help Kent get a world music feel, " Lo’Jo, a group from Angers, accompanied me. This track is different from the others on the album. It completes the "club" theme, with a story about travel…"  And it might be a foretaste of what Kent will do next. But for the moment, Kent is busy bringing the characters of Bienvenue au club to life, somewhere in France, on his latest tour. Not to be missed!