WITH her chic style, piercing eyes and breathy vocals, Melanie Pain strikes the perfect image of a French chanteuse.

As lead singer with the band Nouvelle Vague, she has been enchanting audiences with her sultry Gallic and bossa nova take on punk and new wave classics.

But the sassy singer, who made her name with incongruous, if engaging, takes on Public Image Ltd’s This is Not a Love Song, The Killing Moon by Echo & the Bunnymen, and The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks, is also making gentle waves alone with sweet folk-pop chansons which are going down as well here as in the clubs of Paris. Better even.

“French audiences are so boring!” she says in a lilting accent.

“It’s hard to play in French in France. People are always trying to compare me to other French singers and I see them judging me. They are wondering whether I sound like Vanessa Paradis or someone else. But I escape all that in England. People just come to see me. They know I’m French but are not trying to compare me.”

She goes on: “I don’t know what to talk about to people in France, but in England it is so much easier. I can converse on a personal basis with the crowd. French audiences are so shy and people will not come up and talk to me if I’m sitting in the corner. In England people want to buy you a drink. The live music scene in England is a bigger part of people’s social lives.”

Melanie is speaking from her home in Paris before heading off on a tour to promote her second album, Bye Bye Manchester, which is released next week.

Despite the title, the follow up to her 2009 solo debut My Name, it is another slice of luscious Parisian cool, sung in French and English. It’s not all candied pop, however. The album also features a duet with Mercury nominated Ed Harcourt on the chilling Black Widow (Ed has made appearances at Melanie’s gigs, and has been invited to tonight’s show).

The album’s title is a reference to Melanie’s self-imposed exile in the North West to write songs for the record - which she did armed only with an autoharp, miniature Casio keyboard and a ukulele.

It was recorded back in France under the eyes of producer and composer Albin De La Simone, who has worked with Vanessa Paradis and Iggy Pop. The result combines Melanie’s retro-pop with programmed beats and distorted vintage synths.

“Someone told me once that I was trying to do pop in French, which is great because every time you hear French you think of chansons. It’s hard to do pop music in French - which is what I’m trying to do in my own style.”

And that means singing in French. But why, I ask?

“Because it’s so beautiful!” she chimes back, before insisting, rather flatteringly perhaps, that the audience will still understand her. “Lots of words are the same in English and French, and in history everyone in England was speaking French. We have a close relationship even if we don’t speak the same language, so we can still communicate.”

I suggest she overestimates the average gig crowd’s linguistic ability - even in academic Oxford.

“People are going to have a lot of fun,” she says. “And I’ll try to make them enter my universe. I’m trying to get into the songs so I’m not doing a ‘cold’ show. There’s a lot of talking and sharing. The songs are a bit more rock and roll than Nouvelle Vague and it’s more personal. It’s not easy listening.”

Tonight she plays the second of just four UK gigs, at the Jericho Tavern in Oxford - the other shows being in London, Manchester and Edinburgh. For a woman who has charmed audiences at the Royal Albert Hall, Hollywood Bowl, Olympia Paris, and Glastonbury and Reading festivals it will be an intimate affair - but that’s how she wants it.

A leading light of what is known on the other side of the Channel as the ‘renouveau de la chanson Française’ (the renewal of French chanson’) movement, Melanie has not turned her back on Nouvelle Vague (which translates as ‘New Wave’), but is enjoying her time out.

“It’s great,” she says. “I tour with them when I can but have my own gigs a lot more now. So as well as Britain and Ireland, I am touring Greece and Eastern Europe. I feel really free; I just come and go!

And she is enjoying her role as a cross-channel cultural missionary.

“I don’t know if French is more sexy and chic,” she says. “But it does have that image. We’ve been working hard to make a cool image and it’s worked.

She is encouraging her Jericho audience to join her in making a little sartorial effort. “I can’t go on stage wearing something ordinary,” she says. “It has to be something eccentric.

“The girls in England already make an effort when they go out, but if they think ‘chic picnic in a French park’ they will look wonderful, relaxed and will be able to sit on the floor.

“As for the boys? Well...just make an effort to match your socks!”

Melanie Pain plays the Jericho Tavern, Oxford, on Thursday September 26.

New album Bye Bye Manchester is released on Monday September 30 on Fierce Panda, with single Black Widow, featuring Ed Harcourt, out in October.