“This is why folly is immortal: wise men are too busy to correct fools.”—Rebecca West
It’s a radiant Sunday morning in Paris: blue skies, long autumn shadows running up and down the buildings. I’m listening to Minky Starshine and the New Cardinals, checking out the work I did on his album (I produced/engineered/mixed/played on 6 of the songs). Last night I checked out the two albums soon to be released by Seattle’s Dolour; “Storm and Stress”, which seems to be a more electrified take on XTC’s “Oranges and Lemons”, and “Hell or High Water”, which is a brilliant indie rock update on “Pet Sounds”. NOT the High Llamas in sheep’s clothing, mind you—Dolour’s music is American indie rock in its soul, and the work stands on its own.
Last night I went to see Sebastien Tellier at the Trabendo, part of a complex of venues and attractions on the outskirts of Paris, in the Parc de la Villette. There’s the Zenith, a 5,000 capacity venue; the Cite de la Musique, a large and modern performing arts center (where I saw Charlie Haden and Carla Bley a couple of months ago); the Theatre la Villette, a lovely old stone creature (I saw Archie Schepp there with dancer/unclassifiable performer Boris Charmatz recently); and the Trabendo, which is a modern conglomeration of concrete walls and metal scaffolding, all precisely tagged with the creatures from the “U.N.K.L.E” album artwork. Oops, that’s pegging it squarely and unfortunately in 1998. I can’t say that many good things about the Trabendo—it’s voluminous but seems cramped; it’s wide and sloping but has terrible sightlines; and the sound has been tweaked to perfection—in other words, it sucks ass. It’s a charmless, vibeless place. This did not help Mr. Tellier’s cause. Mr. Tellier is one of those charmed individuals, who, to his credit, doesn’t give a fuck about much (his peons to Africans and Les Peaux-Rouges are more endowed with the embarrassing as opposed to the uplifting/charming sort of naiveté) and shambles thru life in such a way as to arouse the sympathy of wealthy benefactors (read: Air, who grew up in a part of France where a Bentley would be considered an appropriate 16th birthday present, and by their introduction, my new neighbor in the 12eme, the very talented Sofia Coppola) . To be sure, he is talented—a decent pianist and guitar player, and his songwriting has many fascinating moments. As a singer he can touch a song with a delicate whisper, or an absurd faux-operatic baritone, coating himself in slapback delay, John Lennon style. His band, dressed alike in suits and shades, are competent—although the evening was peppered with a couple of false starts, and what I couldn’t tell was if these, or at least the ensuing tense jokes that followed, were choreographed or not.
Both in terms of attitude and visual presentation, Mr. Tellier seems to be picking up the baton dropped by previous generations of naughty, shambolic, Gallic icons---Gainsbourg, Nino Ferrer, etc. Tellier commenced the proceedings with a fairly interesting ballad, accompanied solely by his keyboard player, playing a big Yamaha electric piano (this is his trademark sound on stage and record). Mr. Tellier couldn’t help but keep it light, occasionally interrupting himself with schizophrenic gestures (with his stringy hair, scruffy beard, wrinkled shirt half tucked into his Levis, he looks a like a homeless Russian novelist) and all the while keeping his hands free to further articulate his points: this freedom is accomplished by sticking his lit cigarette up one of his nostrils. I kid you not—a drawing of him doing this is on the cover of his latest release. The joke, he implies, is on all of us, if we take him too seriously. It sort of has the opposite effect—he doesn’t want to be labeled pretentious for assuming his emotions are more important than ours, but—this kind of studied eccentricity is in itself pretty pretentious.
I left before the encore, hurrying out with a few other patrons to make sure I wasn’t alone in the 500 meter run (across the No Man’s Land of a Parisian Saturday night on the edge of town) to the metro.
Love
KS
Paris
