RFI Musique: What inspired the title of your new album, Reprise des négociations (Negotiations have been resumed)?
Bénabar: I found the idea of borrowing a bit of vocabulary normally associated with trade unions amusing! Basically, I like the title of an album to be a little out of kilter with its content. But there's another sense where the title is appropriate. It's a way of admitting that the release of a new album is a sort of resumption of negotiations with the public, a way of sounding out whether they like the new songs or not. Anyway, as far as the more serious songs on the album go, I'm definitely happy to have an offbeat title.

There are certain tracks on the new album which have been stripped right back to basics. And, for the first time in your career, you deal with the subject of melancholy in the first person on Triste compagne. Is this tantamount to saying Bénabar assumes who he is these days? 
It's definitely true that certain songs on the album are a bit less musically encumbered than they have been in the past. And the contrasts are more marked, especially with the brass section. The songs have different musical tones linking them to different periods, such as Beatles' influences, for instance. As far as the lyric writing went, I tried not to systematically hide behind irony or sidestep issues with facetiousness. Speaking in the first person, not giving yourself the chance to hide behind someone else, is maybe a sign ...

The themes on your new album certainly seem a lot more personal. Does that have anything to do with the fact that you recently became a father?
The themes just came to me like that. I can't say I even realised there were any particular themes involved when I was writing the songs. What I do is, I just sit down and concentrate on one song at a time. There's no standing back to look at the bigger picture. Those just aren't the kinds of questions I ask myself when I'm writing.

The arrangements on your new album borrow a lot from the past. In fact, you sound a bit like certain French singers from the 60s every now and then. Is this your way of slotting into French music tradition?
I actually have a pretty complex relationship with modern music. I don't think an accordion sounds old-fashioned, for instance, or that an electro loop sounds particularly modern. Sometimes it can be quite the opposite, in fact ... I

As far as the lyrics on the new album go, you seem to spend a lot of time looking back on the past. Do you think that becoming a father has made you a bit nostalgic?
Yes, I do, but not in the sense that I think everything was better in my day. Quite the opposite, in fact. I'd say I'm very happy today.

Are you ever worried about things being forgotten?
I believe in memory keeping things alive. I think that's really important. I'm a big history buff, you know. Then there are songs like Maritie et Gilbert Carpentier, that was my way of 'rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's' – or, in this case, rendering unto Joe Dassin, what is Joe Dassin's! You don't always have to use grand expressions to show where you come from. My fourth album is a sort of summing up. This 'new French chanson' – which I'm not particularly trying to defend, by the way – is a way of reminding people that there were other styles of 'chanson' that went before it. And they're still alive and kicking today!

So, like images, music is another way of fixing things for posterity?
I think the two go hand in hand. Maritie…. obviously conjures up images of sideburns and bad shirts. But with someone like Hendrix what really hit you was Vietnam. Music can sometimes act as a sort of soundtrack to the news, marking the conscious or the unconscious mind. Actually, I realised that the song Maritie et Gilbert Carpentier is a bit like Proust's madeleine. It was a name I'd stored away in my mind, like Leonid Breshnev. It's one of my magic talisman names, a key that opens a treasure trove of memories.

Maritie… is a song that refers to a pair of famous French TV producers. Was this a way of bringing your joint passions, music and images, together?
I think it's really a way of seeing things and putting them into words. I think songs can evoke sensual or animal things. Listen to a song by Bashung, for instance, and without understanding a particular phrase or expression, it still conjures up images in your mind. There's an interplay between the abstract and the figurative. Right now, I'd say I'm more in the latter half of that equation. I like the feeling of being taken by the hand and told a story. I like to think I'm working within the perspective of those classic French narrative songs.

Le cahier de solfège ends the album on a slightly crazy note, as if, wandering through your memories, you'd suddenly got out of your depth ...
The idea of using that as the last track came to me very naturally. The song's a bit of a literary experiment in style that I don't normally go in for. From there it became a sort of psychoanalytic song about the past, about all those things from the past that survive into the present that you're still living the repercussions from.

So that makes Christelle, the hidden track at the end of the album, an emotional outlet (after the analysis) ...  
Well, I think it's fair to say the album needed a bit of lightness. But, at the same time, I didn't really want to assume what I said in the song because it's totally out of synch with the rest of the album. Let's just say I let my childish side take over for a moment. It's a bit of a joke that suddenly comes out of nowhere!

Bénabar Reprise des négociations (Sony–BMG) 2005

(Tour dates begin in Feb. 2006)