Both Chairlift and Sébastien Tellier were recently on tour together and one of their stops was in Vancouver. The tour has since completed with Tellier finishing up his North American tour at Coachella, while Chairlift now joins Peter Bjorn and John on tour throughout North America minus Vancouver.
The night started off a bit slow. Chairlift was expected to be on stage at 9:30pm, but weren’t on til about 10:15ish. The crowd was treated with an appearance from lead vocalist, Caroline Polachek. She would start the set solo, playing on her Nord. Moments later Patrick Wimberly would join her on stage and made the announcement that we all dreaded to hear, that guitarist Aaron Pfenning couldn’t make it across the border. My initial reaction was, what the fuck? really? this shit usually happens to rappers. The sad thing is, us folks north of the border are generally use to US acts not making it across the border for various reasons.
But both Caroline and Patrick wouldn’t let that news deter them from playing for the crowd. Instead they announced that they were going to be playing a modified set that included some songs from Caroline, Chairlift tunes “Planet Health” and “Evident Utensil”, and some covers. One of those covers pretty much shocked the crowd, as a familiar baseline would drop and the synth kicking in. Attendees quickly realized that Caroline Polachek was singing Snoop Dogg’s “Sensual Seduction” (video below). It was actually pretty amazing, as she would sing the song, THEN proceed to rap the lyrics, Colorado represent what what.
Despite the fact that they weren’t able to do their normal set, the crowd seemed fairly satisfied with the performance, mostly because the band did at least put in the effort and I’m sure this won’t be the last time we’ll be seeing Chairlift in Vancouver.
Once Chairlift ended their set with “Sensual Seduction” and left, the stage was quickly dismantled and setup for Sébastien Tellier, the crowd in attendance was definitely buzzing as many people were talking about how epic they’ve heard his performance is and such. A few moments went by and the man himself came out, this was the moment of truth, and he wouldn’t disappoint, kicking his set off with the latest single “Kilometer”. Ladies in the house were going crazy and I think a few men also went crazy. With his signature disheveled hair, full beard and shades, he was full on serenading the attendees and all were eating it up. He would grab his guitar and play along with the 3 piece band in behind him.
He would sing an array of songs both in French and English and all at the same time sounding extremely silky smooth. Besides the singing the man would connect with the crowd by bantering but to be perfectly honest he would say incomplete sentences or random words like “Freedom”, but it didn’t matter, the crowd loved it all, whatever he was giving, they were willing to taketh. He was really great with us photographers in the front as well, by throwing poses or giving us angles to take shots of him.
The majority of the songs performed, as expected, were off of the Sexuality album. Playing crowd favourites “Divine”, “Une Heure”, “Fingers of Steel”, “L’Amour et la Violence”, but he would play “La Ritournelle” off of the Politics album and “Universe”.
During “L’Amour et la Violence” his showmanship would once again come out. As he was playing the piano and singing, he would take the mic and proceed to climb on top of the piano and layed down on top while continuing to sing for the crowd. Folks in the building were yelling and screaming and cheering for the man, females offering to be his baby momma and such. This song would end the set…for the brief moment that is. Until him and his band came back onto the stage to play “Sexual Sportswear” for the encore. The band and him would jam out on this 7 minute or so long set, but Tellier still wanting to entertain the crowd would pretend the mic stand was a woman. He would gently caress it, make love to it. Then at one point treated the mic stand as…well a penis, and proceeded to stroke it sensually (video below), people were going nuts and he was highly entertaining. And with that he ended the show. How one could not be entertained by the overall showmanship and performance would baffle me.
The concert was produced by Timbre Productions, www.timbreproductionsconcerts.com, check out their website for all upcoming shows. Like a lot of the mid-sized promoters in Vancouver, they’re always bringing in talented people.
Check out photos from past events at our Flickr page, www.flickr.com/photos/killahbeez, and of course don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, @killahbeez.
April 19th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Damn, I hope I will get the chance to see him live.
April 20th, 2009 at 9:01 am
[...] you missed our review of the Chairlift and Sébastien Tellier in Vancouver, as seen here, then you probably haven’t seen this yet. The Chairlift were short a band member due to [...]