The turnout was surprisingly high for a Sunday night, and the entire room was itching to dance. Knowing this, soul singer Jamie Lidell, critically lauded as the most recent musician responsible for bringing funk back to the white man, adroitly built up anticipation by
allowing his four-piece band (guitar, drums, keyboard and sax) to casually saunter onstage before him. When he finally appeared, it was like a landmine going off. The room erupted in cheers and Lidell went right into “Another Day.” Lidell swung and swayed like a Motown Elvis with Buddy Holly looks. Enlisting the crowd to sing falsetto backup for “Out of My System” and armed with what appeared to be a modified radar gun that worked like a shotgun mic, he recorded beats, chants from the crowd and saxophone arpeggios, and warped them into ambient PowerBook techno-pop before us. An improvised scat session slowly took shape, but went on for about five minutes longer than it should have. Coming back in on “The City” (from the 2005 album Multiply) didn’t quite save the groove, but “Little Bit of Feel Good” did, bringing Lidell’s saxophonist to centre stage playing two saxophones at once, while looking uncannily like a love child between Jesus Christ and Al Borland.
Sounding as though Marvin Gaye were 20 years younger (and alive, for that matter), Lidell’s magnetic presence onstage had every woman in the place ogling him with bedroom eyes, especially when he took a moment to tell some tales of dreams he’d had or how much he loved his kid nephew. Continuing on the theme of Gaye pride, “Green Light” may as well have been written by Marvin himself, and the explosive finale of “Wait for Me” ended with Lidell thrashing around and losing his glasses in one last bout of foot-stomping mania.
This was Lidell’s first show on his North American tour and it can only multiply from here.
M83
April 29 @ Richard’s on Richards
Review By Brock Thiessen
In a way, M83 succeeding in a live setting seems downright impossible. Most often the group has only one member. Their sound hinges more on production than actual playing. The sonic output is so unbelievably huge that live translation seems a challenge, to say the least. Yet here they are, M83 on stage, in person and out to show why Saturdays equal youth.
With a sizable crowd in attendance, the French act’s clean-cut and enviably youthful Anthony Gonzalez takes the stage, making a beeline to a lit-up glass box of electronics affixed above a synthesizer. He begins
pressing down on its multitude of buttons, sending harsh,
digital sound waves over the crowd. Soon a trio of
backing players appears from the sidelines, dividing up behind another console of synths, a guitar and a
ridiculously large drum kit surrounded by six-foot plastic panels (presumably there for sound purposes). Then all four break into the song that kick-started the career of this electronically inclined shoegaze act some five years ago: “Run Into Flowers.”
It all makes for a wonderful start to a show, with the band following it up with a choice selection of rockers, ravers and chill-outs mainly from their latest effort, the ’80s/John Hughes-inspired Saturdays = Youth, and its 2005 predecessor, Before the Dawn Heals Us. And while there are few complaints about the song selection (which covered everything from “Graveyard Girl” to “Don’t Save Us From the Flames” to “Gone”), as expected, live many of the tracks lost, rather than gained, sonic oomph. The mix was definitely loud enough and the metal-styled drums hit with the same kick as on record, but the all the blaring keyboards, electronics and guitars often merged into one indistinguishable mess, losing many of the songs’ subtleties.
Also, Gonzalez’s arsenal of live antics—which included frequent use of the thumbs-up, double thumbs-up and the peace sign—left something to be desired, to put it politely. On the other hand, the band’s newest addition, vocalist/keyboard player Morgan Kibby, added a lot to the evening, with her Kate Bush-styled voice coming across beautifully and her energy seeming less awkward and better placed than Gonzalez’s. Yet by the show’s electro-fuelled close, few in the crowd seemed to mind the obvious flaws, giving M83 an enthusiastic response that, funnily enough, seemed to take the band a bit by surprise.
So did M83 succeed in a live setting? Let’s say, for the most part, yes, but there is definite room for
improvement.