In March this year, Frànçois and the Atlas Mountains released their fourth album, Piano Ombre. Similar to the band’s previous releases, the record features a mixture of songs sung in both French and English. However, in contrast to 2009’s Plaine Inondable and 2012’s E Volo Love, this time the balance tips towards French lyrics, which is a result of where bandleader Frànçois Marry was based while working on the record.
“I feel like there’s more stuff in French because I was living more in France recently,” Marry says. “Whereas, previous albums maybe there were more songs in English because I was living in Bristol or in Glasgow. I lived in Bristol for seven years and I lived in Glasgow for one year as well. I was in France mostly for the past two years.”
While Marry’s certainly a competent English speaker (and singer too, for the matter), articulating one’s emotions via poetic verse is a tough task at the best of times, let alone when adopting a foreign tongue. “Recently I’ve been a bit more out of touch with the English language,” he says. “Therefore if I write in English now, I’ve got to be a bit more careful on how I express things, because I might have lost flexibility of speaking English and interpreting my feelings.”
Never mind these lingering doubts. The second single lifted from Piano Ombre, The Way to the Forest shows Marry’s grasp of the English language is hardly lagging. Aside from giving his songs broader accessibility, Marry utilises his bi-lingual vocabulary to twist his voice into different shapes.
“I like singing in both languages,” he says. “If I could speak Arabic I would write in Arabic, if I could speak Spanish I would write in Spanish. I just enjoy being able to play with sounds.”
Across four records of guitar-centric, percussive pop, Marry’s proven himself an accomplished sound explorer. It makes sense to learn, in addition to his frontman duties, he’s toured the globe playing trumpet for Scottish band, Camera Obscura. His instrumental malleability leads Frànçois and the Atlas Mountains releases to be sweetly layered productions, featuring streaks of horns, strings, synths, and vocal harmonies.
Piano Ombre is the band’s first release made in a proper studio, under the supervision of a producer, Ash Workman (Metronomy, Sparkadia). Interestingly, the record is the leanest production of their career.
“I just wanted to have less elements and have more striking ones,” says Marry. “That’s why I chose the producer as well, because he was good at taking fewer sounds and making them sound better – instead of having lots of different elements. I really like my previous recordings but I guess they were a bit drowned in a lot of tension and an ocean of sound. And different instruments that were probably less well recorded as well.”
On the one hand, the altered production style was an aesthetic choice, but it was also the outcome of circumstance. While the Atlas Mountains have been credited on each of Marry’s releases, the band’s lineup has always been rather volatile. Prior to Piano Ombre, however, Marry and the current four-piece incarnation of the Atlas Mountains spent a couple of years forming a strong musical union.
“It was a lot from touring and from enjoying playing live and the kind of rough sound of how things felt when we were playing live,” he says. “[With] my previous recordings, I wasn’t necessarily playing the songs live before recording them. I would just layer things in the studio without experiencing them as a live band. Whereas on Piano Ombre, we’d been touring for two years before. That’s probably why it’s more straightforward.
“I always try to give [the band] as much freedom as possible,” he adds. “I rely a lot on them and their opinions and advice. When we were recording, I didn’t leave the recording room to go back to the listening room, for example. I was just letting them decide on which take was good and things like that.”
Logistic restraints had prevented Marry from solidifying the Atlas Mountains’ lineup prior to now. But once again, Lady Fortune stepped in recently and gave him a chance to build a trusting relationship with his sidemen.
“Before, I was in conditions that made it more difficult for my musicians to make a living out of my project,” he says. “Whereas, the past three or four years in France the five of us have been able to make a living out of my songs.”
Frànçois and the Atlas Mountains aren’t just causing a stir in France. Having inked a deal with London-based indie label Domino, Piano Ombre has attracted attention all over Europe and the UK. They’ll soon embark on their very first Australian tour as well, joining Emilie Simon, The Dø and La Femme for the 2015 installment of So Frenchy So Chic In the Park.
“That’s even more exciting, to be able to come to Australia because of some songs I wrote. It’s great.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
