Indochine, an extraordinary longevity for a rock group

Nicola Sirkis and his band unveil this Saturday Babel Babel, a fourteenth studio album. After more than forty years of career, the rock group is still releasing gold records and playing to packed stadiums.

Indochine is back this Saturday, September 7th with Babel Babel, a fourteenth album carried by the single Le Chant des cygnes. New chapter of a career that nothing seems to be able to stop, more than four decades after the release of their first album.

Just look at the success of the band’s fortieth anniversary celebrations (a canonical age for a rock band) in 2022. That year, Nicola Sirkis and his band brought together more than 400,000 spectators during a tour of six stadiums, all sold out. The recording of the tour sold a million copies the following year.

It’s hard to think of another rock band in France that has managed to stand the test of time with such brilliance. In the United States and the United Kingdom, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. This longevity is due, in part, to Nicola Sirkis’ refusal to rest on his laurels.

“As soon as it hit number 1, I had a major problem,” the 65-year-old singer confided to Pure Charts in 2020. “I didn’t think, ‘This is great, let’s celebrate,’ but rather, ‘We have to do the next one.’ That’s always been my thing: never being happy.”

The right boys, at the right time

Indochine tasted success with their first official single, L’Aventurier, in 1982. A guitar riff recognizable among thousands, an angry and stimulating rhythm… and a period favorable to the New Wave, in which they were then part.

“They appeared a few years after the explosion of punk,” explains Christian Eudeline, author of “L’Aventure Indochine, l’histoire unique d’un groupe mythique” (Éditions Prisma), for BFMTV.com.

“We are then in a logic of renewal of French rock. We no longer have the aggressive side of electric guitars. Indochine establishes itself as the French equivalent of The Cure and Depeche Mode: new sounds, synthesizers.”

Nicola Sirkis quickly found the recipe for the next “number 1s”. The 1980s belonged to Indochine, carried by this taciturn figure with the unmovable black lock of hair. The singer-songwriter, accompanied by his twin brother Stéphane Sirkis (guitar), Dimitri Bodiansky (saxophone) and Dominique Nicolas (bass), released hits after hit.

Their third album, 3, marked the group’s first peak in 1985. It included 3e sexe, Trois nuits pas semaine, Canary Bay and Tes Yeux noirs, which remain forty years later some of the most emblematic pieces of their career.

The album will be awarded platinum and will open the doors of the international market to Indochine. A commercial success which is accompanied by harsh criticism.

L’exception rock

“A real jealousy sets in,” says Christian Eudeline. “Indochine continues to work and sell records despite the passing years, which is quite rare in French rock. Their contemporaries, like the Dogs, Bijou or Starshooter, with their harder sound, have never matched their scores. The hardcore rockers and their specialist press then say that it’s not rock.” A label that Nicola Sirkis does not miss:

“I don’t give a damn about rock credibility,” he said to Thierry Ardisson in 1989. in an issue of Black Glasses for a Sleepless Night. “It’s better to play in front of an audience than critics.”

A foolproof assurance that cracked a few years later, at the time when Indochine was going through its first bad patch. On the eve of the 20th century, the records were selling less well, the composer Dominique Nicolas left the ship, the record company thanked them. The 1990s ended with the tragedy of the death of Stéphane Sirkis, taken by hepatitis. Music critics considered them outdated, the Indochine adventure seemed over.

“There was a turnaround in the 1990s with regard to us,” Nicola Sirkis told France Inter in 2021.

“Our audience was denigrated, saying that they were little groupies,” he continued. “I don’t forget, I don’t forgive.” At the same time, a parody of Les Inconnus was released, a sketch in which the three comedians portrayed Indochine as smug morons. “That too was violent,” Nicola Sirkis would recount years later.

Back in grace

The unexpected success came in 2002 with the essential J’ai demande à la lune, taken from a new album entitled Paradize. For this comeback, Nicola Sirkis lent the reins to Mickaël Furnon, leader of Mickey 3D, who wrote and composed the song. Twenty years after its debut, and despite difficult years, Indochine is experiencing a renaissance.

The single was extremely popular, the album went platinum in four months, and Indochine won over a new generation: nominated in four categories at the NRJ Music Awards the following year, the group won the statuette for best French-language album.

“Nicola has managed to stay in tune with the anguish of the under-20s,” he confided in 2011 to Figaro Agnès Michaux, co-author of the book Kissing My Songs with the singer. “The issues of this age group are at the heart of her lyrics: school bullying, sexual identity.”

This is one of the founding themes of Indochine, between eternal love, biblical references or political commitments; the undeniably androgynous figure of Nicola Sirkis has been playing with gender since the 1980s, when he sang the refrain “Une fille au masculin, un garçon féminin”, a quarter of a century before these questions infused public debate.

These themes remain present in his writing; in 2013, the College Boy video directed by Xavier Dolan depicts the lynching of a homosexual teenager. This denunciation of homophobia and school bullying, served by images of assumed violence, sparked debate and attracted the wrath of the CSA (formerly Arcom).

Eternal teens

Perhaps it is this eternally adolescent touch that allows Indochine to stay at the top. Since Paradize, all their albums have at least been certified gold, when they have not achieved double platinum or even diamond.

The care they take of their audience is probably also a factor: at a time when concert ticket prices are soaring, they make a point of remaining accessible. Again on Thursday, when talking about a future tour for 2025, Nicola Sirkis promised tickets “between 50 and 80 euros, no more”, in the columns of Parisian.

Christian Eudeline also highlights the arrival in the group of Olivier Gérard – known as oLi dE SaT -, guitarist, keyboardist and main composer of the group for twenty years:

“He really renewed the thing. Nicola found in him a sort of alter ego; Indochine is not a group of loners. It needs unity, collaboration.”

“oLi dE SaT brought electronic music, loops, into the band’s sound. Before him, Indochine had a more grunge temptation; before that, there was the synth wave of the 1980s. Indochine’s albums today don’t sound like their first ones at all.”

One thing, however, has not changed: Nicola Sirkis, the face of the group, the only original member still on call. The jet-black locks have turned silver, but the central figure of the group has not changed: “He is the main character. Without him, Indochine does not exist.”