It was another millennium. A summer where France enjoyed singing and dancing, in the euphoria of its first world football champion title. In the middle of a decade that vibrated to the sound of the riffs of Noir Désir and Louise Attaque, a group of kids carved out an unexpected place for themselves in the French rock family. Even before the success of Celtic rap from Manau, the Matmatah group invented a style that didn’t really exist, by mixing French rock and traditional Breton music, dusting off a style then in slight revival. A real masterstroke. Twenty-five years later, an entire generation still knows the words of The apologyof Lambé an dro or Emma that she likes to scream late at wedding balls.
After a separation announced in 2008, Matmatah decided to return to the stage and studios in 2017 to release a fifth album and note that its audience was still there. Disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the preparation of the sixth opus Miscellaneous Leap Years will have taken four years for the Brest team, which will defend it on the Liberté stage, in Rennes, this Saturday, before going to Bordeaux, Nantes and Lille. The style has evolved but the DNA of Celtic rock is still there, as if imprinted in the blood of the old and new members of the group. Charismatic leader of Matmatah, Tristan Nihouarn, alias Stan, shared his memories with 20 minutes.
How would you describe the Matmatah of 2023?
I think he still has energy. We’ve been playing for almost thirty years so we could have lowered it a little. We had channeled the energy a little but we made the group evolve with the arrival of Julien Carton (on piano) and Léo Riou (guitar). He’s younger, he gave us a big kick in the ass. He is the first member who was born after the creation of the group. When we first met him, he was only three months old. It was Jean-Pierre Riou (singer of the group Red Cardell), his father, who held him in his arms. When we saw this baby that day, we didn’t think it was going to become our future guitarist. But he did us good.
You are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the album La Ouache This year. That’s where it all began…
It’s an album that we find quite touching, because it has faults. And perhaps that’s what pleased the public too. It’s an album that we recorded very early, when we were almost ready to record. This record has its faults but it also has its charm. It’s an album that speaks to people, that fits an era.
Was this first album produced by Framboisier?
But yes ! Real name Claude Chamboissier (died in 2015). So we knew him as a member of the Muscular, but basically, it is a zik producer. He still produced albums by big names like Fleetwood Mac. He was the only one who managed to record us. We were a super young group. It’s not easy to get into the studio to release an album. He tried to make us play correctly.
You asked the question of the legalization of cannabis in The apology. What has changed since then?
In fact, nothing has progressed on this issue so the song is still relevant. We still play it because it has aged very well and it still resonates. The subject of legalization regularly comes to the forefront of the news. There is just the sentence: “the year 2000 approaching” which is a little strange in the text. But we didn’t change it, we didn’t want to. I just tell myself that we’ll be in real trouble when it’s legalized.
Aren’t you tired of playing these old songs?
We still play the indestructibles, pieces that have to be done on stage. You must not spit in the soup. It’s true that these pieces, musically, we’ve been around them. But when we play them on stage, the show is for us, it’s the audience who gives it to us. When we send an E chord and we see the audience jumping, we think that’s cool. Our concerts are a mixture of lots of different periods, new songs, older stuff. And surprisingly, it’s all quite coherent.
Do you always tell Fanch to put on the ouache?
It was a message to our drummer at the time. It meant: “Put the potato Fanch”. Now it’s “Put on the Scholl Ouache” because our drummer is called that. It’s part of the song, you can’t take it away.
You decided to open your album “Miscellanées bissextiles” with a 19-minute track. It’s daring, isn’t it?
From a marketing point of view, this is a real aberration! But we wanted to explode the formats, because it took us a long time to make this album. It’s not easy because when you play twenty minutes, you still have to land on your feet at the end. It’s the first song we worked on and it’s the last one we finished. When we ended up with a song like that, we said to ourselves that we were going to embrace it fully and put it at the beginning of the album.
On this album, you signed “Brest-Meme” which is widely listened to? Were you looking for a new hit?
At one time, yes, we looked. But in general, we fail when we try to make a tailor-made single. There, we wanted to do a piece on Brest. I got all my notes back a bit. This is not the first song about Brest, Miossec did it very well. I don’t know if it’s a hit but when we play it, we see that people know it. Regularly, we had songs like that that worked well like “Au conditionnel” or “Les cherries”. You don’t really know why those.
There’s a song about hay fever. Is this a personal rant?
Yes, it’s an autobiographical committed song. I realized that it concerned a lot of people! There are lots of people who come to me and say: “this is the story of my life”. At one time, I even refused to shoot in June because it was too shit. Hay fever is a real handicap when you’re a singer. But it’s better now, with age it’s gotten better.
You are playing in Rennes this Saturday. Is it still Brittany for you?
But yes ! Rennes is a city in which we like to play. It’s an audience that we like, which is quite hot. But there are still some language aberrations from time to time. When we talk about pancakes for example. Here (in Finistère), it doesn’t exist. These are buckwheat pancakes.
You announced a date in 2025 in Paris for your 30th birthday. Will this be the last?
Oh no, not at all. It’s about celebrating 30 years. We toured quite a bit during all this time in France, Switzerland, Belgium. The idea of playing in Paris was to bring together our entire audience by choosing a somewhat central location. When we started the group in bars in Brest, we didn’t think that one day we would celebrate our 30th anniversary in Bercy.