by Phoenix Tso (Gregory's friend, although he doesn't agree with her take on Lady GaGa ;)
There seem to be a lot of French people who don’t really care for Yelle. When I said I was attending their concert in Lille on November 1st, I got a lot of shrugs, and comments like, “They’re too eccentric,” and “They only have like one famous song in France.”
So I was curious to see who would show up to their gig. The club where the concert was held was not packed to the hilt, but the fans were diverse. I heard a lot of English being spoken, and saw a lot of Americans around (no matter how dressed up and made up they are, you can always tell Americans apart from people of other nationalities by how dorkily they carry themselves). Trying to size up the crowd, I also picked out a fair amount of male gay couples, “cool” middle-aged parents with their children, and cute French girls with huge blue eyes and topknots.
The concert started out with a DJ set by some guy, a woman with the best bangs ever, and a t-shirt with a huge pair of pillowy lips sewn onto it. The set was good; especially the remixed Robyn songs, but nobody really paid attention to it. I remember Jamie XX saying before his BBC Radio 1 set that he found it more inspiring to see a DJ then a band, because it was cool to see “people made to dance.” I wonder how he feels when a DJ is playing good music, and nobody dances anyway. That's what happened in this instance; perhaps people were feeling self-conscious, or because nobody had heard of Douglas and the Beauties.
They saved all of that for the main act, which started with two men playing the keyboards and banging on the drums with visors on their faces, until the female lead singer ran onto the stage wearing a romper with a hood and knit dreadlocks all over it. After belting out the first song (sorry, I forgot which one it was), she took off her furry costume to reveal a leopard print dress, and an asymmetrical bob. The loud, vaguely drill-like drums and electric synths really popped live, as did the lead singer herself. I remember seeing a video of her on Youtube, as rigid as a robot as she performed an acoustic version of Les Femmes, but here she went crazy with the jumping and dancing around, bringing a lot of energy to the proceedings, without looking awkward. And even though I can only half understand French, I found the onstage banter was lively and witty, with each band member telling us they wanted to “try out a little something,” and then launching into a seamless medley that included Les Femmes, (my favorite) Tristesse/Joie, Amour du Sol, and others.
At many points, the lead singer would raise her arms while also employing jazz hands, and the audience would follow suit. At the end of the set, she also raised her hands into a heart, which prompted the audience to do the same, as well as to thrash around on the crowded dance floor, all inhibitions forgotten. It reminded me of Rich Juzwiak’s review of a Lady GaGa concert, where he pointed out how often the singer, for all her talk about her music and aesthetic being inclusive and democratic, would order her audience to raise their claws or cheer for her.
