It's September 3, 2014, and a 24-year-old Australian arrives in Paris, accompanying a punk band on a European tour. He decides not to go home. Since then, everyone knows Nathan Roche. If you haven't seen him haranguing crowds on a festival stage with 'Villejuif Underground', then you must have stumbled upon one of his hallucinated noise performances with CIA Débutante in a squat in Poland. Like Kevin Ayers in Montolieu or Robert Crumb in Sauve, Nathan has chosen to live in the heart of the Roya valley. Thus, he perpetuates this tradition of the uprooted freak sometimes seen on cafe terraces in the South of France who, like a storyteller, transports you with wild tales. Just listen: The Sahara Desert? He got stuck there for lack of a visa! Italy? He cycled from Marseille to Ventimiglia in 40° heat last summer! China? He once played in front of 15,000 people at a festival in Wuhan! - - It's easy then to understand that 'A Break Away', this new solo album, is a travel record in the form of an escape (literally 'A Breakaway', for those who missed it), recorded during a return to Australian soil last March. In eleven tracks, Nathan brings together grand history (Ground Zero) and his most personal memories, here lamenting his beloved record collection, sold to survive upon his arrival in France (Recollection), there recounting his successive encounters with his idols David Berman (Silver Jews) and Daevid Allen (Two Davids House) in his youth. This naturalist writing, reminiscent of Jonathan Richman, combines with an encyclopedic knowledge of guitar music, forged while he was a record store clerk in Australia. Thus, he delivers tracks evoking both the greatest hours of Fire Records (The Stevens) and mid-70s Lou Reed (Tristan Winston Price, and his Hunter/Wagner-esque solos on R&R Animal). - - As I write these lines, he's finishing picking cherries in Haute-Ardèche, but he'll probably tell you about it better than I can when you meet him!
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