"I started off by smashing the mould! I needed new tools to work with, a new way of seeing the world!" Lounging in a luxury hotel around the corner from Les Editions Lorelei (his office HQ in the centre of Dijon), Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine recounts the genesis of Scandale mélancolique, his fourteenth album to date. Pausing in between sentences to smother a yawn, Thiéfaine, dressed head to foot in his customary black, appears to have just surfaced from bed – at five o'clock in the afternoon.

Sons and heirs

"Basically, the idea with this album was that I wouldn't write the music," continues Thiéfaine, explaining how he gathered together a team of young songwriting prodigies and put them to work instead. Most of the young melody writers, who specialise in catchy verse-chorus structures, could be Thiéfaine's sons. Interestingly enough, the "Thiéfaine generation" first appeared on record in 2002 on the compilation Les fils du coupeur de joints (Sons of the Joint Cutter) on which leading acts such as Matmatah, Bénabar and Tryo served up new versions of hits by the decadent crooner.

"This time round," drawls Thiéfaine, "I changed the rules of the game. They had to write music for me." Out of the "Thiéfaine generation" who participated in the Joint Cutter compilation in 2002 only Michaël Furnon, from the group Mickey 3D, remained. And his collaboration with Thiéfaine on Les jardins sauvages, a lyrical folk ballad, has to rank as one of the high points of Scandale mélancolique. It is hard to imagine the famously solitary Thiéfaine - who once declared "Hubert/Félix/Thiéfaine, singer/ songwriter/composer. I do everything in threes!" – agreeing to work with other people. But nearly three decades after his first recording, the singer temporarily dropped "Félix" (a result of an administrative error in the army) and today he appears ready to relinquish the term "composer", too.

The credits on Scandale mélancolique make impressive reading. Contributors include Frédéric Lô (famous for having relaunched Daniel Darc's career) who wrote the album's 'grungy pop' title track. And then there's Cali, rock and pop hero of the moment, who composed Gynécées, an ode to the fairer sex, on which he actually duets with Thiéfaine. Cali describes the experience of writing music to Thiéfaine's lyrics as a mindblowing experience. "It was as if someone were giving me permission to lay my hands on the most beautiful woman!" JP Nataf, former frontman of Les Innocents, was equally happy to be involved, composing the melody for the sublime Confessions d’un never been. Meanwhile, rising new Swiss star Jérémie Kisling enveloped L’étranger dans la glace in soft, silken layers, but rock combo Elista radically upped the tempo on Télégramme 2003, sending a message of support to Bertrand Cantat (the lead singer of French rock group Noir Désir recently jailed for manslaughter). And, last but very much not least, alternative French pop star M completes the prestigious list, guesting on the opening track, Libido moriendi. Thiéfaine himself penned just one melody on the album, the closing track That Angry Man on the Pier (featuring lyrics by Boris Bergman).

Rock'n'roll attitude

The collaborative efforts on Scandale mélancolique demanded a certain amount of discipline all round. Thiéfaine insists that when it came to songwriting he "didn't want to overload the lyrics, as I might have done in the past. The songs all had to fit within a strict 'chanson' format." Finished the days where Thiéfaine indulged himself to the max, spinning out long lyrical litanies over more than 10 minutes (a style that often disoriented even his most committed fans). But has Thiéfaine lost something of his 'eternal rebel' status in the process? Strangely enough, no. And his new album hangs coherently together, despite the diversity of guest stars. "We ended up making a lot of the guys involved a lot more rock'n'roll!" laughs Thiéfaine. Read that as meaning that Frédéric Lô, JP Nataf and Jérémie Kisling, those modern-day kings of misery and slow, dark moods, were lightened up with jangling guitars.

Thiéfaine's vocals give the album a certain unity, too. And, this time round, the singer explains, there was a lot of self-discipline involved. "For years now," he says, "I've been singing every day, whether it be live in concert or in a studio. And the fact is vocal cords are muscles - that means the more you work them, the more you can use them!" Thiéfaine uses his finely-honed vocals to great effect on his new album, using disarming charm on songs such as L’étranger dans la glace and Les jardins sauvages and frenzied free-style on Loin des temples en marbre de lune and La nuit de la samain.

But the overall harmony of Scandale mélancolique is derived from Thiéfaine's lyrics, as stunningly original and remarkable as ever. Thiéfaine is notorious for his perfectionism, spending up to six months on a song (the title track of his new album went through no less than 35 different versions!) And your average Thiéfaine song contains more words than an entire album on the current scene. "Television's always dragging people down to the lowest common denominator," declares Thiéfaine, "I'm pulling them back up again!" While newcomers to Thiéfaine's work might be slightly phased by references to Charles d’Orléans, Rimbaud, Nietzsche, James Bond, surrealism and Léo Ferré, lovers of oxymoron, Dylan-style prose and Rolling-Stone attitude will lap up the latest Thiéfaine as if there's no tomorrow.

Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine Scandale mélancolique (Sony/BMG) 2005

Concert at La Cigale (Paris): 14 - 18 March 2006, followed by a series of dates at summer festivals
Jean Thiéfaine's biography Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine, jours d’orage will be published by Editions Fayard-Chorus on 2 November 2005