A BREAK AWAY

Description

It is September 3, 2014, and a 24-year-old Australian arrives in Paris, accompanying a punk band on their European tour. He decides not to go back home. Since then, everyone knows Nathan Roche. If you haven't seen him rallying the crowd on a festival stage with 'Villejuif Underground', then you must have caught one of his hallucinatory noise performances with CIA Débutante in a squat in Poland. Like Kevin Ayers in Montolieu or Robert Crumb in Sauve, Nathan has made the heart of the Roya Valley his home. Thus, he continues the tradition of the uprooted freaks that you sometimes encounter at café terraces in the South of France, who, like storytellers, take you away with their wild tales. Just consider: The Sahara Desert? He got stuck there due to a visa issue! Italy? He cycled from Marseille to Ventimiglia in 40° heat last summer! China? He has already played in front of 15,000 people at a festival in Wuhan! - - It’s easy 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 haven't been following), recorded during a return to Australian soil last March. In eleven tracks, Nathan brings together grand history (Ground Zero) and his most personal memories, mourning here his beloved record collection, sold to survive upon his arrival in France (Recollection), recounting there his successive encounters with his idols David Berman (Silver Jews) and Daevid Allen (Two Davids House) in his youth. This naturalistic writing, reminiscent of Jonathan Richman, combines with an encyclopedic knowledge of guitar music, forged while he was a record store owner in Australia. Thus, he delivers tracks that evoke both the greatest moments of Fire Records (The Stevens) and Lou Reed from the mid-70s (Tristan Winston Price, and his Hunter/Wagner-style solos on R&R Animal). - - As I write these lines, he is finishing cherry picking in Haute-Ardèche, but he will probably tell you about it better than I can when you run into him!