Nouvelle Vague Celebrate Their 20th Anniversary at Liverpool’s Cavern Club [Show Review]

Nouvelle Vague are 20 this year and celebrating in style. With a startlingly brilliant new album, Should I Stay or Should I Go?, just released and new vocalists on board, the band is midway through an extensive tour and kindly stopped off at The Cavern to share their continental charms with Liverpool.

What started as (what could have been considered) a novelty project with high production values two decades ago quickly gained a cult following, and the band has been churning out increasingly experimental releases ever since.

The premise was simple: cover versions of new wave hits in a Bossa Nova/Paris Café style. Their self-titled debut was a revelation, breathing new life into songs by The Cure, Joy Division, Depeche Mode, PIL and The Clash. So cool was the album’s execution that it never veered into embarrassment, and that stature has remained throughout their career.

Despite the recent death of founder member Olivier Libaux in September 2023, the band has ploughed on and, with their most creative and boundary-expanding album yet, have produced a show very different to the performance I saw around 10 years ago, much more a celebration of what they do than a straight gig.

Support tonight came from Kill the Pain, a duo of original Nouvelle Vague members Phoebe Killdeer and Melanie Pain (Clever). Entering the stage in kitsch Rocky Horror style dresses, a futuristic housemaid and a nurse, Phoebe sporting a tinsel wig, the scene is set for a short but unique performance. Their voices, while instantly recognizable, sound almost identical at times to Moloko-era Roisin Murphy, partly due to the jerky, Devo-style songs with a feminist edge. Highlights from their self-titled album include set opener “Zig Zag” and “Meditations” with its cheeky refrain of “What the fuck is going on?”

Melanie appears to be staring me straight in the eye and pointing at me during the opening of “Watch Your Step” while stating, “Excuse me, I’m sorry, I think you’re standing on my foot,” which, while slightly embarrassing, is also confrontational and fun. Melanie’s voice, in particular, is instantly recognizable from some of the more obvious favourites from Nouvelle Vague’s catalogue, but these original songs are equally as accessible and infectious.

Phoebe’s delivery is a composite of high-end theatrics. Strongly resembling Anna Karina, star of Jean Luc Godard’s early Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave) films, she makes the most absurd faces as she sings, looking slightly intoxicated and caught in the frantic stories that each song tells. Melanie is a cross between Rocky Horror’s Little Nell and The Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Parker, strangely robotic / manikin-like in her movements, made more surreal by her middle age.

The set closes with “Woman”, a glorious feminist anthem with a glam rock chorus as the pair methodically chant the letters “W.O.M.A.N”. Its powerful and its provocative.

Nouvelle Vague are a four-piece of keyboards (courtesy of co-founder Marc Collin), drums, guitar and double bass, fronted by Marine Quéméré on the opening song “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” fittingly the opening track on their debut album. Marine has a dreamy café vocal which lends the song a seductive tone missing from the original. This was the blueprint for the band in those early days but as time has passed, they have explored many more genres in their interpretations of these songs, essential to keep the project both relevant and fun.

Marine is joined by the exotic Alonya for Depeche Mode’s “People are People” and the mood changes immediately. Where Marine offers a more traditional Chanteuse approach, Alonya wraps herself like a snake around every word and writhes accordingly in a cocktail dress and heels. The song is performed slowly, almost in the style of a love song despite the anti-racism lyrics, verging at times on “Trust in me”, the python song from Disney’s Jungle Book.

Yazoo’s “Only You” gets the Phil Spector Wall of Sound treatment on the new album and is performed accordingly, we also get XTC’s “Making plans for Nigel” and PIL’s “This is not a love song” as we know and love them. Duran Duran’s “Girls on Film” is another story completely. Wrapped around the double bassist, the singers create a very different narrative to the original, turning what was then seen as hugely exploitative with its soft-porn promo into a narrative, almost from the view of the photographic model. It is at these moments when Nouvelle Vague becomes so much more than a covers band.

The Specials’ “What I like most about you is your girlfriend” is the new album opener but is a clever inclusion. Taken from More Specials, the band’s second album, a release that many considered them hitting self-destruct, trashing the choppy Two Tone/ska bangers for Bossa Nova lift music, it remains very much a pre-cursor to Nouvelle Vague. The trick backfired, and More Specials became a tongue-in-cheek classic as time passed. This new version can almost be seen as a straight cover.

There may be a case for peaking too early as the band brings The Cure’s “A Forest” into the set midway. The song is already seductive, with Robert Smith purring and beckoning us to follow him into the trees, but performed by Alonya, centre stage, it dives straight into the centre of the forest and into a ritualistic strobe-lit dance.  Her physical performance recalls Bridget Bardot’s tribal dance in, And God Created Woman; it is primal, wild, and utterly mesmerising. No longer are the band providing pared-down versions of post-punk hits but ramping them up even further.

Sisters of Mercy’s “Marianne,” The Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks,” and Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” get the NV treatment, the latter spiralling into an instrumental jazz workout whilst the vocalists take time out for a costume change.

Kill The Pain, photo by Christophe Crénel

Dead or Alive’s “You spin me round” gets the full Cabaret treatment straight from the Kit Kat club, complete with Broadway dance moves, while The Clash’s “Guns of Brixton” and Dead Kennedy’s “Too drunk to fuck” allow the crowd a chance to sing along en masse, with the vocalists falling about faux-wasted, and handing out prosecco to the front row.

A late highlight, their single, a cover of Tears for Fears’ “Shout” is given a heavy dub reggae treatment, which segues perfectly into the main set closer, The Specials’ “Friday Night, Saturday Morning” with the addition of Melanie and Phoebe.

A perfect encore follows with Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen in Love” before Melanie returns for a brilliant version of The Smiths’ “This Charming Man.” Phoebe also gets a final outing with her dark and foreboding take on Bauhaus’ “She’s in Parties,” delivered across a play on the James Bond theme with vocals as smooth as chocolate.

One final encore finds Alonya delivering “In a Manner of Speaking”, which has become very much Nouvelle Vague’s signature tune now, stealing it wholesale from Tuxedomoon. Anyone who fails to be melted by this should be on the bus home by now.

An absolute celebration of music tonight, Nouvelle Vague takes the whole idea of tribute acts and turns it on its head. Always fun, always experimental, and never patronising. Brilliant.