When you listen to Yann Tiersen, you can forget about all those ‘live’ albums that sound just like studio albums but with added applause. Yann Tiersen On Tour was indeed recorded in public, but it comes over as being very, very different from his previous releases; all in all, it’s a new album.
Gone are the lilting tunes and frantic waltzes. No more piano (well, almost none), accordion and violin. Banished is the solitude of the multi-instrumentalist musician, because Tiersen strapped his electric guitar back on a while ago, and recruited a no-nonsense band to go with it: “We set out to explore the freedom of playing together, discovering each other; there’s a real chemistry here.”
They had a great time as a particularly penetrating rock combo, criss-crossing Europe, honing their act from concert to concert, and ultimately deciding to pay homage to their finest moments on this album. Although Tiersen has loved rock since his adolescence in the days of Nick Cave and Joy Division, he hasn’t forgotten his own past experience and previous recordings. In fact, he’s carefully retained one key element: the melodic qualities.
Indeed, he’s done it so well that the dense rock on this album, awash with simmering guitars and the oh-so-strange pulse of the Ondes Martenot organ, offers a harmonious quality that carries all before it. But it’s not all guitars; there’s space here for vocals and lyrics, too. Tiersen has never sung so much, finally hitting the right tone that he’s been hinting at on his past few albums.
There are no other guest vocalists on this album, aside from a modicum of female vocals added for the sheer timeless wonder of once again hearing the ethereal singing of Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins). There’s also a highly unusual version – but startlingly obvious when you think about it – of Ma France à Moi, recorded at the Printemps de Bourges festival and arranged by Tiersen and his band, with French female rapper Diam’s belting out the vocals and Grégoire from the rock band Têtes Raides on saxophone.
Everyone always says how implausible the idea of making rock music is in France. Well, here’s another French exception, an album that is impressively consistent, positively purring with electric pleasure and an exceptional tension that runs unwaveringly throughout the entire album.
Apart from the album, there’s a DVD (his first live one) that recounts Tiersen’s tour as a story without words (almost) told through a constant juxtaposition of music and pictures: pictures from concerts, pictures from rehearsals, pictures of the audience – pictures that never stop moving, almost as if there was a homing device somewhere. A travelogue, a road trip, glimpses of lives led on tour: in a nutshell, an excellent record of Yann Tiersen in concert, with an added half-dozen bonus tracks.