Live Review: Chris Garneau, Caribou, José González - La Cigale, Paris

admin on Feb 26th 2008

Kneeling down over a curious-looking antique pump organ, Chris Garneau opened the evening with his love songs of hush-toned whimpers accompanied by a cellist. Stark and overflowing with quirky detail, his music was granted the intimacy it required despite the volume of numbers still filing in, drawing reverential respect and thunderous applause.

Admittedly there is little variety in the themes or mood of the material; Garneau’s holy trinity appearing to be that of forlorn introspection, loneliness and nostalgia. However each number helped to channel it an effective momentum that was warmly received. Having once lived in the capital, Garneau converses in French between songs, charming the crowd and potentially adding to his following here.

Loud, brash and a lot heavier-sounding than normal, Caribou represent an explosion of colour to the line-up. This is my third time seeing Dan Snaith’s live ensemble and while the sound has improved considerably since the last occasion at Dingwall’s, the initial ‘wow’ factor of seeing two great drummers thrash it out amongst it all has faded and for the most part this simply fails to engage the way it should despite a set that nicely mixes The Milk Of Human Kindness and Andorra.

Once José González appears on stage, the air or rapt attention returns. The sound is perfectly clear (as you would expect with just one man and his nylon-stringed acoustic) and any enthusiastic clap-alongs are quickly hushed out.

It’s been three years since I’ve given José González a proper listen, as shortly after the discover of Veneer, his style of finger-picking his way through brooding chord sequences quickly lost its appeal for me (perhaps the Sony advertisement aided that process by acting as a final nail in the coffin).

So while his performance tonight is much better than expected, still it has little range is style or sound - however this is clearly not an issue with the rest of the crowd, going down a treat with the Parisians right up to the encore of Kylie Minogue and Massive Attack covers.

In the end, it’s pixie-sized Chris Garneau that unexpectedly steals the show:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg-goUrHgMg]

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