Photo:
The spirit of 80s electro-pop is alive and kicking in the form of French band Juveniles. Originally signed to the ultra-cool label Kitsune (who launched the careers of Digitalism, La Roux and Crystal Fighters) and now on a major label, Juveniles have been making waves with their own reimagining of the synth driven vibe that characterised the 80s.
"We met about three of four years ago I think, in our city Rennes," recalls vocalist Jean Sylvain. "There were a lot of rock and garage bands around at the time and [drummer] Thibaut was in one."
"Yes, the band was called the Russian Sex Toys," laughs Thibaut. "We had a single, the name of it was Fuck Radiohead.”
"When we wanted to stop playing garage rock, you know playing shitty bars and not ever really getting paid, we said 'why not try to do something serious', so we launched an 80s band. It just came right."
"It was simple," says Thibaut. "We created a band, everything went OK, that was it."
The band played their first show as Juveniles in their home town in June 2011. Since then the band have had a pretty busy 18 months.
They got the call from Kitsune ("that was one of the most stressful moments of my life" confesses Jean Sylvian), have played around France, been to Sweden, Canada and visited the UK several times.
Watch Juveniles perform 'We Are Young' below
The band have also found that the warnings about English crowds turned out to be nothing more than rumours in their case.
"We've been told a lot of times that the English crowd was kind of difficult, they told us 'you'll see, it's very rough in England.
"But actually when we came here for the first time it was for a Kitsune party at Heaven, and it was amazing. It was crazy. The feedback was amazing.”
Juveniles returned to our shores in May to play Brighton's Great Escape, followed by a slot at NME's Koko show, and found a similarly receptive crowd.
"Koko was crazy, there are a lot of venues like that in France, these old theatres, but we don't even play them there. But then we come here, where no one even knows us, and we get to play places like that. The English have been great to us."
In today's global music scene, Juveniles say, having too much of a national identity as a band can be a hindrance.
"There's a kind of music that could be from anywhere, when you talk about a band like The Hives, you don't think of their music being Swedish. But in France it's different, you can hear that a lot of these bands are French and I think that's a problem.
At the moment Juveniles are working with French producer Yuksek on their new album.
"That's going really smoothly," says Thibaut, "the first album's coming along really well."
But the band cite the English bands of the 1980s as their biggest inspirations, bands like The Smiths, New Order and The Cure.
"We also grew up listening to a lot of stuff from DFA, if we could work with anyone, it'd have to be James Murphy," they both agree.
This summer has seen several French arrivals on UK music lovers' radars, with the likes of Melody's Echo Chamber and Jupiter gaining critical acclaim. But that's not a sign that the French and British music scenes are starting to come together, Jean-Sylvain explains.
"You really have to travel to be able to pay attention to what's going on in other countries. The bands we know from other countries we know because they've come and done promo in France.
"There are a lot of bands that I heard for the first time when I came here, bands that are really big acts that just never made it across the channel, like the Mystery Jets. They're huge but in France they play in 400 capacity venues.
"It's the same with Mumford & Sons, they're about to be the biggest band in the world and until we came here we'd never heard of them."
