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How many press-ups must a man complete before you
call him a man? Why must smoke get in your nose? Will
lipstick on your monitor tell on you? And furthermore,
was prog a doughnut?< /B>
Alas, none of these vital questions would truly get
answered by Sébastien Tellier's strangely ill-attended
performance at the imperiously-monickered Institute Of
Contemporary Arts. C'est la vie.
Judging by the lack of true believers at said
venue, its probably fair to say that Parisian Seb
is a man who needs an introduction. But
something so conventional just would only hold a
distorted mirror to a performance that was either the
inscrutable work of (steady now!) mad genius,
or the result of an evening's ingestion of deadly
lager pints.
It was easy to read last year's Politics album as a
rushed attempt to get Tellier product onto the market
to a world still unswayed by single track downloads.
The sighing glory of signature tune La Ritournelle
ensnared all who came into ear-'ole orbit, but there
more than a just a frisson of swiftly-upgraded
demo's to pad out proceedings.
Not one to miss a promotional opportunity when they
see one, the good people at label Lucky Numbers have
thought to call his forthcoming album Universe. Those
ahead of me will have already clicked that such is the
title of Seb's contribution to Daft Punk's new
movie-thing Electroma. And its with Universe, that
Tellier kicks off this 'concert'.
And a beautiful thing it is too. With just the
Devo-attired Simon Dalmais (brother of
Camille, don’cha know) for company on a trusty
Yamaha (keyboard, not motor cycle - it wasn't that
mental). Seb sings with the torchy sincerity of a man
with the Billie Holliday blues. Hippy hair and
vagabond beard may exaggerate his receding hairline,
but this is a man with nothing to hide and everything
to share.
Except his fags. Which is just as well really,
considering Seb harbours a penchant for sticking the
old death sticks four-square up his hooter. This is a
man who truly wants to take you through the smoke
rings of his mind.
Maybe the lurch in contrast from the sublime to the
ridiculous isn't great for building up a momentum, but
in Seb's world those two concepts go together like
bop-shoo-bop-rama-lama-ding-dong.
After regaling us with some hard-to-decipher
pronunciations on the state of jazz, Seb found some
time to rattle off a few urgent press-ups. Not bad. In
the '70's they would have called him an all-round
entertainer. Although contemporary cynics may have
added some more choice epithets.
And only Seb could have taken us so gently into the
pleasure and pain of sweet regret that constitutes
Broadway before abruptly following it up with a kind
of screechy prog parping that Keith Emerson
might have thought a tad excessive.
In another mercifully brief prog excursion, we
found Seb just a couple of octaves away from some
Focus-like melismatic yodelling. Perhaps it was
an effort to prove that his Dad really was in
Magma. A Dutch too much in anyone's
language.
In the interim, Tellier gave us 'a song for French
people', a subdued Tony Allen-less
Wonderafrica, a naturally anticipated La Ritournelle,
and finally, most affectingly, a bare Fantino. It
should be added that before Seb reached the sign-off,
he managed to aqueeze him a little more spontaneous
working-out, nasal cigs, and some peculiar -
relatively speaking, of course - snogging of
loudspeakers.
Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Sebastien
Tellier. But be careful, we’d like him back.
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