Encore 1983-1987

Description

‘I remember perfectly the day I discovered the catchy single ‘Toutes les nuits’ on the airwaves of Europe 1, in Maneval's show. I jumped on my tape recorder to record an excerpt that I listened to on repeat, until I got the album ‘À bride abattue’, from New Rose. This album was absolutely everything I liked. Brilliant, urgent, and well-crafted compositions. Fine and mischievous lyrics, a lo-fi sound reminiscent of the sixties with angelic voices and lots of harmonies. On the cover, a girl group of students in tight skirts, ponytails, and high heels, who delivered their songs with a nonchalant air. Odile and Isabelle on guitar, Caroline on bass, and Mike on drums. A succession of unstoppable hits: ‘Toutes les nuits’, ‘Malhabile’, ‘Le supermarché’, ‘Nicolas’, the moving ‘Behind Your Sunglasses’, but also perfect covers: ‘Teach Me How To Shimmy’, ‘With A Boy Like You’, ‘The Kids Are Alright’, ‘You Can’t Sit Down’. Just gems. The carefreeness, charm, and innocence of this wonderful album illuminated the beginning of my eighties. And I still listen to it.’ - Étienne Daho
Would it be doing justice to the Calamités to finally twist the neck of this embarrassing set of words, ‘girl group’ that sticks to them and their pleated skirts? This scented cloud indeed prevents us from simply considering them at their true value as a ‘group’ in general, and from reflecting on their astonishing and brief trajectory. In just a few months of performing on stages, with a handful of original songs recorded here and there, they became, from Dijon to Rouen, from Paris to Toulouse, from Bordeaux to Strasbourg, the darlings of a demanding scene of uncompromising rockers. Perhaps tolerated, also knighted, if need be. Their currency was original and fast verse-chorus structures, for which the adjectives ‘fresh’ and ‘light’ seemed to be reinvented. There were also, in equal parts, a few covers, which gave an idea of the roots of their songwriting, with one foot in the 50s (on the dance floor) and the other in the 60s (in the garage). Until their successful final incursion into the sales peaks with a popular success that everyone, from seaside campgrounds to the trendsetters of the capital, could hum along to comfortably. Everything the Calamités touched with class, rigor, nonchalance, and the right amount of amused distance turned to gold. No mysteries, so few dramas, the group shot through like a meteor and left little time for its audience to realize the importance of these miniature anthems in three voices, in a style that combined an arrogant innocence with an insolent ease. Not playing any of the cards automatically assigned to girls (sexy attitudes, feminist clichés, dilettante groupism…), they synthesized a teenage pop spirit with a carefree rock’n’roll energy. Too shortsighted to recognize it, too jealous to admit it, a bit misogynistic too to write it on all the magazine covers, the music press here preferred to keep this little secret warm until today, evoking the same images about them, on repeat: the good friends, the big sisters, the nice cousins, and blah blah blah. But the Calamités had both this slight delay - a certain 50s-60s classicism - and this little lead over others: their songwriting talent and their words in French. It was easy to understand. But when the country realized it, it’s true, they had already taken off. They were no longer there. They were elsewhere.
What remains of the Calamités in 2021? About fifteen recordings, already reissued twenty years ago (on the Last Call label, affiliated with the parent company New Rose), a dozen television appearances floating here and there on video platforms, a complete fan site, but now unplugged (Calamiteux) and then texts from historians and amateur critics who desperately serve the same biographical notice, as one endlessly recounts the good story, well-framed: the super nice girl group that announced… What did they announce, by the way? We don’t really know in the end, the Calamités remaining a sort of anomaly, geographical, temporal, and mental: they claimed nothing, expected nothing from anyone, and above all they had fun, in a sort of completely assumed clairvoyant amateurism that cheerfully broke the glass ceilings that presented themselves to them. Without apparent effort, the Calamités deeply touched those who crossed their path with their natural talent for writing a handful of good songs that became classics. And that’s not given to everyone.