For anyone who’s been keeping track, you’ll know that we recently ventured to Ypsigrock Festival in the mountainous Sicilian town of Castelbuono, where we saw Confidence Man, Ama Lou, Gaika and many other brilliant acts from around the globe including Parisian outfit Her. During the festival performance, this band opened the mainstage with bountiful energy and infectious dance moves.

We’ve covered their music many times here at TMR, most notably their songs ‘Swim’ and ‘We Chose’, both of which we discuss in detail with one of the band’s founding members Victor Solf. We also go on to discuss their love of British and American music, growing up in Paris, maternal role models, the SheForHe movement, their debut album, and remembering band mate Simon Carpentier. As you will sense throughout this interview, Solf’s on-stage persona is authentic to the enthusiastic person we met outside a small café on the streets of Castelbuono.

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TMR: Hey Victor, so are you looking forward to the show tonight?

Yeah, yeah, we are very excited! I love Italy, I love being here and it’s my first time in Sicily. I’m staying for a week after the festival, just for holidays, I’m going to Palermo and then to Mondello, that’s near the sea.

TMR: I first discovered your music through the song ‘Quite Like’ back in 2015, and you guys were anonymous then, why did you decide to go down that route?

Because we wanted to let the music speak for itself and it was quite funny for us to let people think that maybe it was a woman singing, because our band is called Her. It was also a good way to make people unsure about where we come from, and for a while people thought that maybe we were from New York or London, but they didn’t know we were from France, from Brittany in fact.

TMR: That’s true, because you also sing in English to add further to the mystery, why did you choose not to sing in French?

All of our influences come from the UK or America, it was kind of natural for us to sing in English. It was also a way to travel easier around the world, because English is the main speaking language now in the world, and it was really important for us to travel, to discover new countries, and new cultures.

TMR: You said that a lot of your influences come from London and New York, can you name a few?

I think that our English influences are really bands like Jamie xx, James Blake, The xx, King Krule, Nick Cave, The Beatles (of course!). What I like especially about James Blake or Jamie xx is that they’re really trying to put the right sound in the right place - the music is really minimal and there’s a lot of space in their sound, it’s something that I really love and I try to do also in my music.

TMR: Your music is quite minimal in parts, and influenced by British and American cultures, but at the same time it has a very French sound, is that something you also wanted to integrate or did it come naturally?

Of course! We couldn’t do otherwise. We grew up in France while there was Laurent Garnier, Daft Punk, Justice, Phoenix, and a lot of bands that we are so proud of in France. I think that maybe it’s in the chords, those middle chords which are very French, very romantic.

TMR: Going back to ‘Quite Like’ and that first video, which you said you were leaving it up to the audience to decide your identity. Obviously, in the video the main character is a woman and it’s celebrating the power of femininity and female sexuality. Is that also an important theme throughout your music?

Yes, of course, it’s a thing that’s really important for us, and for me now, because I was raised by women. I was raised by my mum, my grandma, my aunt, there was not a lot of men in my life. My father was staying in Düsseldorf, in Germany, while I was growing up in Paris, and so I think it’s a really important thing to me. You know, we are also part of a movement called HeForShe and in Paris, we’re the ambassador for it, which is kind of a big word! I’m really proud to be part of that. I think that men have a really big role to play to help women have equal rights.



TMR: That’s such a message of positivity! It makes me think of a song like ‘Swim’, which is against violence, social regression and increased extremism, do you think it’s your duty then as an artist to speak out against issues in the world?

I don’t know if it’s really a duty. For me, the only thing that matters is that I need to say something that comes from my heart, that is really authentic, that’s the only thing that matters. For ‘Swim’ for example, we were in the US when Donald Trump won the election and we were watching it on the TV, that’s exactly when we decided to write this song. It’s really a song to talk to the American people, to let them know that they are not alone if they don’t like Donald Trump, that French people are feeling the way as them. It came about like that… you know, “swim against the tide, walk against the flow”. Fight the power.

TMR: Sadly, Simon is now longer with us and so has it become even more important to continue this message of positivity in his name?

Yeah, especially after he passed away, because you know what I learnt from him is life is really precious, that you need to do your best, work as hard as you can work, to enjoy life, and be happy. From my perspective, it’s easy to be sad and to hate people and even to knock someone in the face, but it’s much harder to hug them, to try to love someone you hate and to try to enjoy life. It needs a lot of courage. That’s what I’ve tried to achieve with this album and with my life.

TMR: The song ‘We Choose’ has special significance on this album, and I’m always drawn to the lyric “I think we could do anything, our wings are broke, but we’ll keep gliding”. What inspired that line and the song as a whole?

It was a long time ago, because it was the first time that we wrote, Simon and I, for Her. It was a time when we had another band and it was really scary and difficult for us to quit this band and start something new. It was really natural for us to say that we chose the way we’ll be remembered and I think we could do anything, it’s up to us. For a while, we were thinking about our fans, our family, our friends, and how they’re going to react if we had another band. We were thinking a lot about that and at one point I said to Simon, the only thing that really matters is us and it’s what we decide. We can decide to quit, to start something new, and if we really, really want to do something new, to make great music, then we will achieve that. That’s my belief. It’s really a thing that I love about human beings, you know, you can give five or ten years to anybody and if they really want to be a cook or an astronaut or a musician, give them ten years, and if they work everyday, they will achieve that.

TMR: It’s interesting that you took this leap of faith, because I notice the theme of “broken wings” also appears in the song ‘Icarus’, signalling a legendary tale of failure. Is it also important to you not to be afraid of failure?

Exactly, and you know we love metaphors. We love images. We love talking about the sea, the air and birds; I love those kinds of images.

TMR: For you, do you have a favourite song on the album?

I think that my favourite song is ‘Good Night’, because it’s a song that I wrote for my wife when it was a hard time for her to sleep, because her father was sick, he had cancer, and it was a similar time for me with Simon, and so I wrote this song to help. For me, it was important to talk about hope in a very, very quiet way and it’s a song I wrote maybe four years before it went out, because it was really important for me to be sure the song was finished exactly the way I wanted it to be. That’s why it’s my favourite song, because it took me so long to like it, to know that song was finished.



TMR: I saw in a Facebook post that you said the process of the album was “long and difficult”, and you give the example of ‘Good Night’ there, so would you say that makes each song on the album even more special?

I really think that’s the strength of a first album. It’s really unique for an artist, that first album, because you can have songs from ten years back or songs from six months back. It’s really telling a story which is most of the time really deep, because it’s the story of your life. Now I’m working on the second album, and even if it’s coming out in two years for example, it’s just going to be stories about two years of my life.

TMR: It’s great to hear you’ve been back in the studio working on new material, are we going to hear any during your performance?

No, especially as we’re only playing a thirty-five minute set, but I hope that in October or November while we’re in France, in London, maybe elsewhere in Europe, that we’ll be able to play some new songs. It’s always special and very interesting to be able to play new songs for the crowd, to really get their reaction.

TMR: Do you get different reactions in different countries?

Oh yes, of course. You know, I love France, I’m going to live in France for the rest of my life, maybe I’m going to spend some time in the US and London, but the problem with French people is that they don’t really speak English. They don’t understand it, it’s quite rare, although they get the feeling. The thing about the UK and the US that I love, is that the people really get the lyrics. For example, we always start our live performance with the song ‘We Choose’, and I’m singing by myself, ‘we chose the way we will be remembered,’ that’s the first lyric and I can really tell the difference in the first ten seconds. When we play this song in London for example, after the first ten seconds they stop talking and you can tell that they’re thinking “okay, this guy is starting his concert with that!”, and then I sing ‘not you, won’t smoke me to embers,’ and it’s like “okay, we’re going to listen”.

TMR: Have you ever thought about switching those first lyrics for French, you know to get those audiences members?

Yeah, yeah, maybe I should do that! But you know, I love singing in English. I will always remember when Simon and I was in high school, when bands like The Strokes, or Arctic Monkeys, or Bloc Party, or The Libertines, they came into France and they became so popular. Everyone was dressing exactly their way and everyone had a band trying to sing in English. It was so positive and it was the dream that if we sing in English and if we have a band, we’re going to be like them. We were going to travel all around the world and live adventures. Like today, we have a hotel twenty or twenty-five minutes away from here [Castelbuono], it’s really in the middle of nowhere, there’s nothing except the countryside of Sicily, and it’s crazy! That’s my job! I really think that’s why I’m singing in English.

TMR: Of course, you’re playing this festival, but is there anywhere else that fans can see Her playing live this year?

This year, we’re playing a lot in France in October, we have a Europe tour in November. We’re playing in Moscow, that’s going to be fun! We played there two years ago at a big festival and we played in Ukraine two months ago. We have a big show in London coming up this November. I’m also quite happy to know that the tour is going to be over in February, we have a gig in Paris at The Zenith, it’s a really big venue, and I’m quite happy to say that it’s going to be the last gig for a while. Then I’m going to take a break and write new songs.



-Hannah Thacker