The Good Kind Of Hurt

Pain's first solo album, 2010's My Name, cemented her place in the pantheon of musical masters whose work is both listenable and meaningful, a very small club indeed. Her second solo effort is Bye Bye Manchester, a supremely delightful, half-English, half-French little pop masterpiece that should by rights see her gathering new fans everywhere. What's more, Pain is making the latest in what has become a series of visits to Australia to perform at 2013's So Frenchy So Chic at Werribee Park Mansion, and it's tough to imagine a more delightful place to see music this irresistible.

Even for an artist whose music was never only about harmonies and memorable melodies, Bye Bye Manchester represents something of a dark turn for Pain, and the first thing Inpress wanted to know was whether or not she consciously decided this was territory she wanted to explore. It seems not. Pain explains, in faultless English but with a cool Parisian lilt, that a record such as this one was always going to happen.

“No I think it was natural because I decided to really write this album by myself. This was not the case before. I was working with a lot of people. This time it was really closer to who I am and it was really natural.”

Does this mean that Pain sees her solo projects as decidedly separate from her work with Nouvelle Vague? It might seem an odd question since the aforementioned band performs only covers. (Inpress feels it should qualify this – yes, they are covers, but they're covers of Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen, among other way cool bands, so that's one thing. The other is that they're such radically interesting covers, one gets the feeling they're actually new songs). The thing is though, as Pain describes, sad songs say so much.

“I think they are not that different. There are many songs with Nouvelle Vague that are sad songs. I think my songs are not so far from this really. I like to be sad, you know. I'm happy to be sad, you know what I mean? I think in Nouvelle Vague you find that. That was the new wave, you know, there were some sad songs. Sometimes, like with Joy Division, it's a pure sadness that is just so beautiful. I don't think anyone who comes to my gigs is shocked at all and thinks that I'm doing something so different.”

As mentioned above, Bye Bye Manchester is divided between French and English lyrics. It should be noted, however, that even for monolingual morons like this writer, this fact in no way detracts from the record's appeal. Rather, it's quite the opposite. And it seems that Pain makes the decision as to which language she'll write in based – once again – on the sad songs thing.

“It's funny because I like to do both. The song Bye Bye Manchester, I like the fact that the title is in English and it's sung in French. I play with that because for me writing in French is very intense. It feels like you have to be complex and clever and whatever. When I write in English I feel like I have some kind of freedom and a bit of room to experiment. They're two processes that I really like. I feel like I can be a bit more light and playful in English and that I should be a bit more sad in French. A friend of mine paid me a great compliment once; he said I was trying to write British pop, but that I was doing it in French.”

Talking of Britain, Pain is on record as stating that this album draws on the enduring pop legacy of the city of Manchester. In talking about this, Inpress feels extraordinarily privileged to be given a glance at a teenaged Pain's bedroom walls, which, as it turns out, were not all that dissimilar to your correspondent's.

“As a teenager, I was completely in love with Morrissey. I had his posters covering every wall in my bedroom and every time I entered my heart would stop beating. Then with New Order and Nouvelle Vague there was always a Manchester connection. I'd wanted to go there since I was thirteen or fourteen. When I went there for the first time, I realised how shitty it was. You know, it's just not a beautiful city. But it's so strong. People there are so true. They're loving their town but they're also hating it at the same time. They all want to leave but they're all coming back. And all the songs are talking about this – to escape. I felt the same, but in the end I had to go there because I needed to be by myself and write and be out of Paris. I didn't want anyone to hear the songs. It just seemed so natural to go there.”

Vintage synths seem to be everywhere nowadays, but it's hard to recall an album where they're as central to the overall character of the music than this one. Interestingly, Pain says that the decision to incorporate them kind of made itself.

“It's quite simple, really. I kind of composed the album on this little Casio PT-30 and when I went back to Paris to record it, I really wanted to keep this first feeling of when I composed it with these really basic chords. It sounds really cheap when you play it in your living room, but when you plug it into a system on stage they just sound so fantastic. It's also such an intimate little sound, which is something that I always try to do with my live show. I've been playing a long time in a band with drums and bass and guitars, and it's nice to do something a little bit more friendly.”

Pain is a seasoned traveller down under and is full of praise for not just Australia as a whole, but, more specifically, the abovementioned event at Werribee Park Mansion. From the way she describes it, punters should be rearranging their holiday calendars with great haste.

“So Frenchy So Chic is just the perfect place for me to play. Last year it was a beautiful sunny day, people were coming and, you know, having their little Frenchy picnic, dressed up for the occasion. Kind of an old-fashioned picnic, and I just love that. Last year at the back of the stage was a kind of transparent curtain, you know, and it was as if we were in a box in the middle of this park with trees in the background and trees on the side. It was a really, really nice atmosphere. Lots of good wine. Yeah, it was like a dream last year. I hope it's going to the same this time. I'm coming every year to Australia for the last five years. I always stay there for the whole month, so I basically spend all my January in Australia. It's my second home.”

Thursday 17 January - So Frenchy, So Chic, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane QLD
Sunday 20 January - So Frenchy, So Chic, Werribee VIC
Monday 21 January - So Frenchy, So Chic, Town Hall, Sydney NSW