There is a neat bit of symmetry to tonight before Nouvelle Vague even appear. Australian singer-songwriter Nadéah opens the show, but she is hardly a stranger to the band. A former Nouvelle Vague vocalist and co-founder of The Lovegods, she has since carved out her own solo career, releasing three albums including 2019’s Milk Teeth.
It makes Nadéah a particularly fitting way to begin the night, connecting Nouvelle Vague’s past with their return to Australia. By the time the headliners arrive, the Metro Theatre is packed and ready for one of the stranger and more enduring ideas to emerge from the early 2000s.
More than two decades after Marc Collin and the late Olivier Libaux began rebuilding post-punk and new wave songs around bossa nova and French chanson, the concept still works. Joy Division, The Cure, The Clash, Buzzcocks, XTC and Dead Kennedys all inhabit the Nouvelle Vague universe, but tonight the set is heavily weighted towards Depeche Mode.
The clever bit is that Nouvelle Vague don’t treat these songs as museum pieces. Familiar melodies are slowed down, stripped back and sent somewhere completely different, sometimes becoming almost unrecognisable until a lyric suddenly gives the game away.
At the centre of it all are the band’s two frontwomen, and they are ridiculously cool. They dance, prowl and glide around the Metro stage, swapping vocals and playing off each other with an effortless presence. There is plenty of theatre in the performance, but it never gets in the way of the songs.
That revolving cast of female vocalists has always been central to Nouvelle Vague. Camille, Mélanie Pain, Phoebe Killdeer and Elodie Frégé have all passed through the band, alongside Nadéah herself, while Juliette Lewis and Vanessa Paradis have also been part of its extended world.
Tonight’s packed Metro suggests Sydney hasn’t tired of the idea either. Songs born from British punk and post-punk are pulled apart and rebuilt with a distinctly French sensibility, while the steady run of Depeche Mode material gives the crowd plenty to recognise before Nouvelle Vague promptly turns it inside out again.
Images Deb Pelser
