It's the Same Old Song

Sunday, Jun. 05, 2005 By GRANT ROSENBERG / PARIS
PLAY IT AGAIN, VINCE: Delerm keeps the chanson alive in Kensington Square
AMELIE DARNIS
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Vincent Delerm cuts an unlikely figure for a pop star, especially a French one. There's no trace of Johnny Hallyday's leathery ostentation, no hint of the designer brooding of a Jean Michel Jarre. With his self-cut thatch of prematurely graying hair, the 28-year-old Delerm prefers casual clothes and tennis shoes, and professes to have neither a computer nor an e-mail address. Though he doesn't dress the part, Delerm can still pull in the crowds. Last month, he played a sold-out five-night stand at the famed Olympia concert hall in Paris — the ultimate badge of success in France, equivalent, in stature if not capacity, to headlining at Madison Square Garden or Wembley Stadium. He embarks on a national tour on June 28. What's the attraction? The young singer-songwriter is reviving an old French tradition: the chanson.

Back in the 1960s, these nostalgic songs captured the hearts of music lovers with their emotion-charged lyrics and rousing delivery, sometimes, but not always, accompanied by the accordion. Charles Aznavour, Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy and others — with their haunting and spirited ballads of regret and doomed love — were in vogue around the world. Now, Delerm and artists like Keren Ann, Benjamin Biolay, Carla Bruni and Thomas Fersen are making chansons chic again. The new-old sound incorporates elements of big band, swing, old-fashioned melodrama and whispery vocals. "Many musicians have a certain attitude, saying they do one kind of music but claim a certain pop aspect as well," says Delerm, sitting in a Paris café drinking orange pressé on an unusually warm spring day. "I've always said that what I do is the traditional chanson Française, with three couplets and three refrains."

Delerm's songs often set a somber tone; rain-drenched streets and bittersweet imagery are the backdrop for stories of complicated couples, tangled communications and missed moments. He doesn't use amplified guitars or electronic squeaks; just his voice, the piano and occasional strings. "Because of musicians in the last decade like Fersen, people are paying attention, which opened the doors for others," he says. Delerm has rushed in where others have already trod. His two albums — a self-titled 2002 debut, followed by Kensington Square last year — have already sold a combined 600,000 discs.

Raised near Rouen, a cathedral city on the Seine 120 km north of Paris, Delerm is the child of two literature professors. His father, Philippe, is a successful author in his own right, having penned a dozen books. Vincent, who taught himself piano at 17, also studied literature and explains that his father is an influence, but "it's not his writing that inspired me. It's the writers, books and filmmakers that he shared with me, texts with a certain type of intimacy that had the same effect on me as they had on him." One of these influences is François Truffaut, with his tender explorations of relationships; another, the wistful 1970s chanteur Alain Souchon. Delerm's writing contains unexpected metaphors that focus on small observations, like the image of a naked woman that forms and disappears in a cup of sake in the song Evreux. Critics dismiss his style as precious, and ridicule his distinctive enunciation — drawn-out syllables and unexpected, oddly placed, upward inflections — as affected. But there's a certain quirky charm in his words and the way he sings them. Fanny Ardant et Moi, a rare up-tempo number, recounts Delerm's imagined relationship with the French actress 27 years his senior. "We are listening to Gregorian chant," he sings. "She barely speaks and me I say nothing/ We have a relationship like that/ Fanny Ardant and me." Delerm deftly turns an implausible conceit into a finely observed slice of life, in which the odd couple spend awkward weekends at his parents' house. "I like the idea that we don't know the people around us, what's going on in their heads," Delerm says. "We see two people across from each other or in a car or in a bed, and we don't know how the other feels."

Delerm, an avid Cure and Divine Comedy fan, doesn't write in English, instead appropriating a phrase here and there to enrich his lyrics. "What interests me is the impact of certain expressions, and I just haven't mastered the language enough to do that," he admits. But he does hope to bring his French songs to English audiences; there are a couple of U.K. concerts in the works in the coming months. Maybe he can put a chanson in hearts across the English Channel, too.