RFI Musique: Totem, after Rodéo: both sound like titles inspired by the Far West.
Zazie: Totem was the first title I chose, but then I thought everyone would come out with “First she does cowboys, then she does Indians”, so I changed it to Jet Lag, but that was too much like jet-set — although anyone who takes planes knows that there’s more “lag” involved than “jet”. For a while I thought of Hors phase, but some people found it a bit sad and so I found myself back with Totem. It’s like a magic word that you can turn how you like. I do have a vague idea of a sculpture raised up in the name of some ideal, or of some interior construction, of some kind of vague mysticism. It’s fine by me that it’s vague, because I like vague words, especially for album titles. Everyone knows that it’s not going to change anything and that people can put what they like into it. It was the same for Zen: I had quite a clear idea, but people read it their own way.

How do you write your lyrics — high on the emotion of the moment, or after a reflective pause?
I write the song after the music has been done, and I write at night, riding on a dream more than on what I’ve lived that day or the week before. You can do it that way because, when you write, you’re in a state where everything you’ve seen and lived can be recycled — whether it’s a shop window, a lump of dog mess, a scooter, a girl or a lover. It’s a pretty sleepless state, a time when you write at night, a bit of a dangerous state really. It doesn’t turn your life upside down, but it makes you a bit out of sync. Inspiration brings up feelings, and there’s only one thing I’m looking for: emotion. And I tend to find that emotion in things that aren’t particularly happy: weaknesses, contours, roughness, the thing that doesn’t quite fit. I usually start with myself, but not always, even if it’s myself that I know the best. And since I don’t want to offend anyone when I think something’s not right with the world, I use “I” because I think it’s more honest to include myself than to stand on the sidelines.

The final lyrics of the album, at the end of the song Vue du Ciel, are lovely: “I am a tomboy/ Who will end up blooming”.
People see it as a song about death, but it isn’t at all — unless it’s about la petite mort. In fact, it’s just a song about having a cuddle. It’s fun to make a happy, rather vague song about getting your kicks. I have been called a tomboy and have called myself one. In fact, I used to want to be a boy. But then, whenever a guy grabbed my arm and said, “I need to tell you something”, my heart would be pounding thinking that he was going to kiss me. But then he would say something like, “What do you think about Géraldine?” and the dream would fall apart. I could see that I should stop being mates with them all because no one was going to kiss me that way. It took me a while to realise that, even if it wasn’t necessarily seductive, there was a certain tomboy way you could be, even as a hetero. A way of being who I am, which turns out to be a girl who has got something going for her.

How did you go about working on the compositions you did with Jean-Pierre Pilot and Philippe Paradis?
It was the same team as for Rodéo, but with different material. For Rodéo, it was like working in a nuclear power station, with a fantastically fun amount of buttons to press, which is where the album got its sophisticated electro sound. For this one, we had the basic stuff: I had my CP70 Yamaha electric piano, Jean-Pierre Pilot had another CP70, Philippe Paradis had an acoustic guitar and an electric one and a tiny rhythm box for going boomtitiboomboom when we really needed some backup. We also added an electric guitar at the recording. There are very few loops and hardly any computers involved. There are two reasons for that: we’d rather be having fun on stage, and it’s much more flexible and simple than having a great big factory in the background that won’t let us miss a beat or a bar. Also, on the album, we wanted something a bit more full on and up front. All the musicians were always together in the room. I played the piano on two-thirds of the album, which is something I hardly ever do usually.