RFI Musique: Alice & June is a full-on guitar album. Would you say Oli De Sat, Indochine’s guitarist over the past few years, has become a sort of alter ego for you?
Nicola Sirkis: All the tracks on the album started out with me coming up with guitar riffs, so yes, in that sense Alice & June is very much a guitar album… albeit an amateur one! There’s certainly osmosis between Oli and me as far as songwriting, the atmosphere of the songs - and even life itself - goes. Maybe Oli wouldn’t have the gift of writing something like L’Aventurier, but working with him has definitely been the greatest – or at least one of the greatest – collaborations of my professional career. It’s the most extraordinary story when you come to think about it. Oli started out as a fan of the band, sending us in cassettes and stuff. Then one day I got in touch with him because I thought what he was sending in was pretty good. And now look at him, he’s our main composer and producer. It’s changed his life - and mine, too, come to that! I guess it’s fair to say Oli’s become a sort of alter ego for me. But his greatest talent is actually having no ego at all!

Alice & June is a very hardhitting album. People might have expected you to come up with something more laidback after your phenomenal chart success and your unexpected comeback…
It’s difficult to follow up a really massive success like Paradize. That album changed a lot of people’s lives. But one thing we knew for sure was that we couldn’t just turn round and do the same thing again. I only realised the sheer violence at the core of that album after we’d finished writing it. This time round, when we went into our record company HQ to get them to listen to June I saw everyone sitting there with looks of dismay – not because what they were hearing was bad, but because it was hard stuff. This isn’t a nice soothing album – and the tour we’re about to kick off won’t be either! We’ll be like live wires, and all the more so as this is going to be our last tour ever.

You claimed that Alice & June is Indochine’s Exile On Main Street. So why not stay out there on the road and keep on touring like The Stones until you’re well over 60?
Well, the reason I made that comparison is because we made this album with all of us shut away in a house together, just like the Stones did with Exile. It was only afterwards that someone pointed out that Exile On Main Street is one of The Stones’ worst-selling albums! But they’re still out there going strong, aren’t they?
I think I’m sure of what I’m saying when I go round telling everyone this is going to be the last Indochine tour. I’ll be 48 when we finish it - and will it all still be worth it? I have to admit the business side of things is beginning to get to me a bit. I have to make a real effort to keep an eye on everything if I want the fans to get treated properly. I manage to keep an inner circle of people I trust, but it’s a dirty world out there. One minute you’re promised concert tickets will go on sale for 30 €, then you find out they’re going for 35 €. You have to check everything all the time and that’s what wears you out the most. But being out there on stage makes up for it. That’s the best reward you could possibly imagine!

One of the greatest strengths of Indochine over the years has been the link between the visual and the musical side of the group’s work. How have you managed to reconcile your songs and your aesthetic approach?
It just wouldn’t be possible to work any other way. This is my universe, my group and I’ve got very clear ideas as to how I want to present it all. When you sit down and write a song you end up visualising it so well that you have a very clear idea of the image you want to put across with it. I’ve often been criticised for trying to be a sort of artistic director, but I think it’s only logical for me to work this way. It means I’m firmly involved in my universe and I know how to make it function. I certainly try and give my songs an image and breathe some life into them – they’re never just lyrics set to music!

What about the album cover for Alice & June? How did that come about?
It’s a painting by the American artist Ana Bagayan. She belongs to the whole “surrealist pop” movement with other artists like Mark Ryden and Marion Peck… And that’s very much my own universe with all those childlike images set in a fucked-up adult world. A lot of people from the rock world are into that stuff, people like Beck and Björk… The guy who’s the main buyer of Ryden’s work is Johnny Depp. I met the artists last year actually at an exhibition. What triggered Alice & June off for me was reading Alice in Wonderland to my daughter. The book’s a really fucked-up fairytale, like some sort of bad trip.
My main sources of inspiration have always been literary and artistic references, my own culture and sub-culture. I spend a lot of time going round museums and art galleries. When we were over in New York recording with Melissa Auf Der Maur she invited us along to a performance art happening where there was one of the guys from Sonic Youth and the people from Hole... In New York, there’s a real link between the modern art world and the rock scene but in Paris that doesn’t exist at the same level. We wanted to do our ‘secret’ gig in Paris at the Palais de Tokyo (art museum), but we weren’t able to because of security problems. I would have loved to play in a museum. It’s a shame that galleries tend to be associated with stuff that’s a bit “hype” and aren’t generally open to other things.

Many of the childlike images you have used have been set in a sexual context. Has that ever posed a problem?
Well, I wouldn’t go too far! I’m not the David Hamilton of the rock world or anything! I think it’s difficult to show this kind of image these days. We did end up with “stop pornography” stickers plastered over posters for Paradize. And I have been asked whether I’m defending the idea of suicide on June. There’s been the whole Michael Jackson trial lately, of course, and people are very sensitive to the way children are portrayed. There’s been a return to a rigid moral order and certain photographers and writers have been censored for venturing into this territory, even though they’ve taken a totally artistic approach. I’m aware that could happen to me one of these days, but I’ve never exercised any form of self-censorship when it comes to my work.
Look at the whole religious caricatures business right now – it doesn’t work when religion tries to run the world either! Rock could well prove to be the precursor of a healthy new form of agit-prop. The problem is everything to do with kids has become a sort of no-go zone and now that I’m a father myself I can understand more why people get worked up with everything they see in the media. I’m actually writing a book right now on a subject that’s a bit – let’s say, close to the bone and my editor has warned me about overstepping the mark and breaking the “final taboo.” I think the world’s gone a bit mad right now and got swept up in a sort of collective hysteria. But I can’t help it. That’s where I’m coming from – not paedophilia, of course, but taking a child’s view of our crazy, fucked-up world. Luckily, art will always be a way to get round things. Take an artist like Balthus, for instance, he’s never had any problems even though his paintings are really explicit – and Lewis Carroll is still freely sold in bookshops!

Indochine Alice & June (Jive/Sony) 2005
Tour starts 6 March 2006