Paris (AFP)

Playing in front of 40,000 people, or in front of 10, "moments of bravery", questions about its "legitimacy": Last Train, French locomotive of rock, digest all this in "The Big Picture", released this Friday, like the quartet the decrypts for AFP.

After 350 concerts and a first album, the Alsatian gang (now based in Lyon), took "one year, one year and a half" to blow and achieve the second. Far from the scene the decor has changed.

"Everything is huge with the concerts, and (when there is a break) everything becomes ... not huge, you say to yourself, + everything is super fragile +, that you're a shit, you're not legitimate," loose Jean-Noël Scherrer, singer and guitarist.

The "concerts are only high" bounces Julien Peultier, the other guitarist. Even when these young people dressed in black - born in 1994 for three of them, in 1995 for the other - have tasted galley types.

"We're coming back from Quebec, we played in front of 10-15 people, but we're not ashamed," reveals Julien. "It's like Clermont-Ferrand, once, there were 10 people, it was the parents of the first part".

- "More introspective" -

"There were Eurockéennes, Vieilles Charrues, concerts in front of 40,000 people too," continues Jean-Noël. This mixture of "moments of bravery" on stage and doubts before the second album gave the ten titles of "The Big Picture".

The leader of the group describes him as "more introspective, melancholy, nostalgic, with honest stories", while the first was "more incisive".

Next to "Disappointed", a small fragmentation rock bomb, there are indeed songs - all in English, except for the voiceless piano of "A Step Further Down" ("One step further down ") - further in their register.

The guitars offer new horizons and new breaths. On "Tired Since 1994" and "The Big Picture", electricity is combined with the strings of the Mulhouse Symphony Orchestra.

Either a dialogue "between four wankers who know a little play together" and musicians "pointy + ouf + out of the conservatory," says Jean-Noel. "They are a little school" laughs Timothée Gerard, bass player.

- The orchestra, this "fantasy" -

The orchestra, "it's a kind of fantasy, but also a necessity, considering all that influenced the disc: the music of films, the post-rock, things much more pop, + ambient + (atmospheric)", dissects Jean-Noël, guided by the idea that "music is the soundtrack of your own life".

A picture? "The Big Picture", a 10-minute-long river song, scrolls intimate images of learning with instruments much larger than they were - they first met at age 11 - at XXL scenes .

This second successful effort, and the energy deployed by the boys live, should offer them festivals and first high-powered games, as they have already done with Placebo.

Antoine Baschung, drummer gripping without laughing, goes there from his little anecdote. "The singer, Brian Molko, I met him, I smoked a cigarette at the exit of the Zenith A guy comes to talk to me, asks for fire (Timothy imitates Molko at this time to perfection, ed), it It's him.In fact the stars are super cool, but in the big prod ', the boards overprotect the groups.When Molko comes to see our concert, there are three guys who follow him, kind + be careful, do not fart the foot + ".

Antoine, who speaks the least, found the name of the group when they were teenagers. A name that they almost changed, but kept for the whole journey.

"When it is written Last Train in red headlining the Bataclan, we say to ourselves + that's the thing that played in the basement a little crazy college? +", Smiles Julien. They will see their name at the fronton of the Trianon in Paris on November 6th.

© 2019 AFP