RFI Musique: How did you set about working with Mathias Malzieu (lead singer/songwriter with the group Dionysos), who co-produced L’Espoir?
Cali: Mathias and I are very close. We’ve bumped into each other a lot on the live circuit as I tend to appear at a lot of the same events as Dionysos. The idea of Mathias and I doing something together had been knocking around for a long time and we felt like this time we’d got our chance. I just turned round to him one day and said, ‘There’s this little studio right next to my house. Do you want to come down and give me a hand there?’ Mathias was busy writing La Mécanique du cœur (Ed.: Dionysos’s last album) at the time, but he agreed to come down and give me a hand. The amazing thing was he managed to turn the studio into one big playground – I’m not used to that way of working at all! He turned up one day, his eyes just glittering with mischief and set about working on my songs in a very intelligent way. But we never took anything too seriously. We had a laugh together and enjoyed ourselves. People who came along to visit us in the studio said it didn’t look as if we were making an album at all! It’s funny, but on the album we ended up keeping a lot of first takes. The whole thing was very spontaneous. I’d never have imagined we’d record Je ne te reconnais plus with Olivia Ruiz, for instance. But she turned up one morning to give her boyfriend a hug and we asked her if she’d do the vocals on the song. We ended up keeping Olivia’s voice on the album because we liked it. That’s very much Mathias’s philosophy in life – take a bit of everything that comes along and enjoy yourself to the max!

Scott Colburn - renowned for producing Arcade Fire’s last album as well as albums for Animal Collective and Robert Wyatt - produced the rest of the album. How did that work out?
It was more or less the same philosophy, the same approach. Scott has a very organic way of working and once again the emphasis was very much on enjoying ourselves in the studio and keeping a lot of first takes… We had an amazing time in the studio. We used to knock off work at three o’clock in the afternoon - and then jam with the musicians right through the night! People in the studio I work in down in Carpentras had never seen anything like it!

Despite the emphasis on fun and spontaneity in the studio, L’Espoir actually sounds a lot more sophisticated and a lot more lyrical than your last two albums…
You know, when I sit down and compose material on guitar or piano, I always start fantasising about what a song will sound like with all the arrangements. On songs like Résistance, and especially 1000 cœurs debout, I asked Scott Colburn to use arrangements that would be a bit like Arcade Fire, something really powerful where you feel this real communion with the audience when you play it live. When we finished 1000 cœurs debout I knew that was a song we could really have fun with live on stage. I hope I’ll get the whole crowd singing along!

It’s interesting that L’Espoir should be such an overtly political album. You make reference to the big socialist rally Ségolène Royal organised at the Stade Charléty, in Paris, during the French presidential campaign. It’s funny that your album should come out practically at the same time as the new Bernard Lavilliers album which also mixes music and politics. Was it a conscious move on your part to get more political?
I think what happened was last year we lived through what can only be described as a historic moment, a time that was incredibly turbulent and violent and shook everything up. I got involved in the political campaign and I came into contact with a milieu I had had no experience of at all. It was incredible, I saw politicians get shot down in pieces in the morning and then rise again from their ashes that same night and get straight back on the campaign trail. And the huge wave of disappointment that hit after the result made me feel it was absolutely imperative to write songs about it, if only to soften the blow in some way.

L’Espoir is just what it says – a breath of fresh hope! I’m always amazed when I see all those 16, 17 and 18-year-olds marching through the streets yelling slogans. They’re the future! Our generation’s maybe got a bit too resigned now. But these young kids haven’t lived through all our disillusionment and disappointments. Their hearts are full of rage, they march along with their fists raised in the air and there’s a spark of eternity in their eyes.

Do you have any particular mentors when it comes to writing political songs?
Without a moment’s hesitation, Noir Désir ! And Léo Ferré, of course. My Dad went to a Ferré concert once and I remember him telling me about the violent reactions Ferré provoked with what he said on stage and what he sang about in his songs. Half of the audience were spitting at him, the other half were going wild with applause... There’s some powerful stuff around on the rap scene, too. I find IAM’s lyrics really disturbing. And then, of course, there’s (Ed.: Boris Vian’s song) Le Déserteur, which is still very topical today when you think about all those young kids being shipped of to get killed in Iraq.

You end your album with Le Droit des pères (Fathers’ rights), a song that’s very hardhitting and even a bit politically incorrect. What’s the reason behind that?
I really wanted Le Droit des pères to come at the end of this album, the way Le Vrai Père marked the end of Menteur. I’m involved with an association called Les Papas = les Mamans (www.lplm.info) who campaign for fathers’ rights. They believe that if you take children away from their fathers or their mothers, you completely destroy their mental equilibrium and the child will never be happy.

I’ve had my own personal experience of this, too. I remember sitting in this gloomy courtroom in Perpignan one afternoon with a woman I’d once loved and who’d once loved me, a woman I’d had a child with. We filed in flanked by our lawyers, staring down at the floor, following this whole procession of couples literally tearing each other to pieces. I didn’t get custody of my child that day. I was authorised to make a very limited number of visits and that was that. I remember going out into the street afterwards and feeling totally ripped apart. It felt as if I’d been murdered. Le Droit des pères is a song I could have written at that moment in time. The reason I can put it on my album now is because things have moved on for me. We’ve come to terms with our relationship being over. The grieving process is over and our child isn’t being bartered between us any more. We’ve realised a child needs both a father and a mother. But I’m aware that every day other parents are being torn apart in painful situations like that. Le Droit des pères is a song of hope, a song that lets other fathers know they’re not alone.