By Jason Barnard
Thierry Haliniak grew up in a village in rural Burgundy with no music magazines, and a radio that played Madonna, Depeche Mode and Nik Kershaw. He arrived in Lyon in his early twenties to finish his studies, found a small indie club called the TOY, and spent the next decade trying to absorb everything he’d missed. He then formed Nothing To Be Done with Didier Frahier. After Haliniak left he went home, bought a Tascam and a drum machine, and spent ten years recording demos. Then Didier called, in 2007, offering to select eleven of the best tracks and re-record them properly. The debut My Raining Stars album followed in 2008. Two decades on, the two have returned for the fourth, Toy Club, named after the club where they met. Haliniak explains why it may be their last LP.
What made you put TOY at the centre of this record?
That club means a great deal to me because it’s where everything started for me musically. It’s where I met my friend Didier Frahier (E-Grand) in 1989, and we quickly formed my first band, Nothing To Be Done. The band’s drummer was actually one of the club’s two owners and DJs. It was also at Toy that I discovered the British indie music of the late ’80s and early ’90s. I came from the countryside — no internet, no NME, no Melody Maker — so I mainly listened to whatever was on the radio. The club and the music played there were an absolute revelation to me. That’s why it felt completely natural to name this new album Toy Club and celebrate that wonderful period of my life. It made even more sense because, on this album, I once again worked with Didier, who brilliantly produced, arranged and mixed my songs, just as he had done on the very first My Raining Stars album back in 2008.
Fine was written in 1992 for Nothing To Be Done. What made you suggest to Didier that this was the song to bring back, out of everything from that period?
I think it’s simply the only decent song I wrote back then! (laughs) Didier was far more musically mature than I was. He had already been listening to bands like The Smiths and The Housemartins for years and had fully absorbed those influences. Unlike me, he was writing genuinely good songs almost from the start. I wasn’t ready yet. I was still finding my way, clumsily imitating the incredible British indie pop I was discovering at the time. It took me a few years to digest those influences and eventually become capable of writing decent songs without copying my new heroes.
You kept the structure and vocal melody of Fine intact but added a bridge after the first chorus and rewrote some of the lyrics. How do you decide what to leave alone in a song that old?
Experience, I suppose. Over the years I’ve gradually learned what works and what doesn’t in a pop song. In this case, I felt that adding a bridge would bring something extra to the track. As for the rest, I kept the vocal melody intact because it still sounded right to me. I rewrote the lyrics because I wanted the song to celebrate the nostalgia of our twenties, since that’s when it was originally written. We didn’t keep the original guitar arrangements, much to my disappointment, because Didier didn’t want to recreate what he had done 35 years earlier. I tried to negotiate at first, but I failed! (laughs) In the end, I have to admit that he convinced me — his new guitar parts are excellent.
You have a rule about never repeating a chorus more than twice. Where did that come from?
Oh yes, that’s definitely one of my obsessions! (laughs) More often than not, I get bored when a song repeats the chorus for a third time, even when it’s a great chorus. I like the idea of leaving the listener wanting more and encouraging them to play the song again straight away. Or perhaps it’s simply because I don’t entirely trust my own choruses! (laughs) More seriously, I think it comes from Definitely Maybe, which is probably the album I’ve listened to more than any other, alongside The Stone Roses’ debut. Noel Gallagher generally didn’t repeat his choruses a third time, and I suppose that left a lasting impression on me.
You were asked to leave Nothing To Be Done around 1994 or 1995 because, in your own words, you weren’t progressing at the same pace as Didier. Thirty years later you’ve just made an album together. How do you think about that arc?
Even after I left Nothing To Be Done, we never stopped being friends. I have enormous respect for Didier, both as a person and as a songwriter and arranger. In fact, I’d encourage everyone to check out the music he releases under the name E-Grand.I’ll always be grateful to him for giving me the opportunity to launch the My Raining Stars adventure in 2008 and helping me release some of the songs I’d written between 1999 and 2007 with high-quality arrangements and production. On top of that, personal challenges that we each went through probably brought us closer together and accelerated our desire to work on something again. We’re both aware that time passes quickly and that life is fragile, so there’s no point putting things off forever. And, on my side at least, I was pretty certain I’d be delighted with 99% of whatever he came up with, just as I was back in the days of our first band.
When Didier first played you his arrangement of Head Over Heels back in 2007, you said the delicacy of the arpeggios still gives you goosebumps. Was there a similar moment with what he did for Toy Club?
Yes, absolutely. I had tears in my eyes the first time I heard rough mixes of Silent Girl, Wherever and It Will Take Me A While. I loved them immediately. There’s no question that I couldn’t have done a better job myself. Those songs would still have existed in some form, of course, but Didier genuinely elevated them. He sometimes took them in directions I wouldn’t necessarily have imagined myself. I’m incredibly proud of these songs and deeply grateful for what he brought to them.
I understand this may be the final collaboration between you and Didier. Where does that idea come from?
You can never predict these things with certainty, but I feel that I’ve already given him some of the best songs I’ve written. I’m not sure that the songs I still have in reserve would appeal to him as much, or that I’ll necessarily write anything better than what we’ve already done together. Time moves on. We get older. Life brings other responsibilities and concerns. Producing, arranging and mixing an album requires an enormous amount of time and energy. Part of me feels that Toy Club might be the perfect way to complete the circle with Didier. It’s an album I’m immensely proud of.
Mark Gardener from Ride mastered the album at OX4Sound. Ride are one of the bands your listeners often mention in connection with My Raining Stars. What was it like having someone that close to your own reference points working on the record?
Ride have been one of my favourite bands since the early ’90s. When I started seeing posts on Facebook about Mark Gardener’s OX4 Sound studio and the mastering services he was offering, I immediately thought it would be fantastic to work with him, even if it was only for the mastering stage. Mastering is a crucial step in giving properly mixed songs their final impact and presence. I emailed the studio and, to my surprise, Mark replied the very next day saying he was available. The price was also much more reasonable than I’d expected, so I thought, “Why not go for it?”In a way, it felt like a dream coming true. If someone had told me 35 years ago that I would one day collaborate with Mark Gardener, I simply wouldn’t have believed them.
You grew up in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye and then arrived in Lyon aged 23. How has both locations influenced you and your music?
In Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, you couldn’t find magazines like NME or Melody Maker. I grew up listening to commercial radio, so I was raised on artists like Madonna, Depeche Mode, Tears For Fears, The Cure, Nik Kershaw and many others. I still love that music today and I’m perfectly happy to admit it. But when I arrived in Lyon and discovered the Toy club, it was a huge revelation. I immediately fell in love with everything I was hearing there — The Smiths, Ride, The Charlatans, Happy Mondays, My Bloody Valentine, Chapterhouse and so many others. Like many people before me, I felt as though this music had been made specifically for me. The melodic side of my songwriting probably comes from those Saint-Sauveur years. On the other hand, my love of noisy, slightly messy guitars definitely comes from the Toy years. Consciously or not, I think my music is a blend of those two seemingly opposite influences.
You said it took you about 10 years to stop writing what you called pale imitations of the bands you worshipped. Looking back at those demos from the late nineties, what do you hear in them now?
I hear a lot of awkwardness! (laughs) But the foundations of My Raining Stars are undeniably there. I went through periods when I was obsessed with Oasis, so I tried to write Oasis songs. Then it was Teenage Fanclub. Then The Brian Jonestown Massacre. It was all rather clumsy. Little by little, though, I consciously moved away from those direct influences and eventually ended up creating my own mixture of all the bands I loved. I wrote a huge amount of material, but I also discarded a lot of songs or left them sitting in drawers. That said, I’m currently working on a new album and I still find myself digging out very old demos — sometimes twenty years old — that I think could stand up remarkably well if properly re-recorded.
You have said the B-sides album is their real third-best record. What is it about those songs that still does something to you?
The first time I saw Oasis live was in Portsmouth in May 1994. They played several B-sides that wouldn’t end up on Definitely Maybe — although, of course, I didn’t know that at the time. I immediately fell in love with songs like Fade Away, which, in my opinion, deserved a place on the album. They’re simply great songs. Acquiesce, It’s Good To Be Free and Rockin’ Chair are still among my favourite Oasis tracks to this day. I once read that whenever Noel Gallagher wrote a song, he always considered it a potential single. In other words, he didn’t really distinguish between A-sides and B-sides. That’s a philosophy I’ve tried to apply to my own songwriting, on a much smaller scale, of course! (laughs)
You have also previously mentioned that you have an album’s worth of electro-pop demos. Is that still on the cards?
Yes, absolutely. In fact, my French label, Too Good To Be True, has heard a few of those demos and I suspect they’re even more enthusiastic about them than they are about my guitar-based songs. Sometimes I joke that they might refuse to let me release another guitar album until I’ve finally recorded that electro-pop record! (laughs) More seriously, I’m very proud of those songs. I tend to work on them in between my more guitar-oriented albums. I enjoy giving my ears a bit of a change of scenery and exploring different sounds whenever I need a break from electric guitars — although, to be honest, that never lasts very long! (laughs) There’s probably also a connection to the music I grew up listening to during my teenage years in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye. As I said before, I have no problem embracing those influences. So, in the end, there’s nothing surprising about it at all.
