Photography by Bohdan Cap

Nobody loves indie anymore. Dancing to intentionally awkward rhythms while students stamp on your toes? Why bother? Indie wasn’t always that. Once it really was independent — someone recording sometimes funny songs on their own in small spaces with little interest in sharing what they made with the world.  
     Le Volume Courbe are like that, which explains why they’ve gone almost unnoticed for the best part of a decade. Moving to London thirteen years ago from the North of France, Charlotte Marionneau has been writing songs and keeping the company of some of Britain’s most respected musicians ever since. Singing her heart out in her bedroom, she’s been joined by everyone from My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields to Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval strumming a guitar. “But it is just something I do for fun,” Marionneau pipes up. Even when Alan McGee got his hands on the track “Harmony” in 2001, “I didn’t take being a musician seriously,” she lilts in her French accent. “I never thought it was something I could do.”