noir desir / la vent nous portera
said the gramaphone:
On 27 July 2003, the man who sings this song murdered his girlfriend. This is not a fiction. Bertrand Cantat attacked Marie Trintignant and three days later she died in hospital. He spent 3 years in prison. In 2010, Krisztina Rády, the mother of Cantat’s two children, the woman he left for Trintignant, committed suicide. Cantat was inside the house. An autopsy found that he was not responsible.
Long before these things, in 2001, Noir Désir released the song “Le vent nous portera”. The wind will carry us. It features guitar by Manu Chao. There is clarinet and vibraphone. The question is this: Can you hear the evil here? And this: Can you hear the despair? I hear a band playing a hypnotic song, playful and solemn. France’s U2, making something intimate and strange. I do not see a death’s-head, I do not see the horror. The wind will carry us. I cannot think of a more terrifying thing.
