Halloween comes sickeningly

So. Following my plan to embrace my navel-gazing seasonal misery, last night I went to a Benjamin Biolay concert despite a nasty headache from having my long and curlies viciously brushed and blowdried to Afghan-hound-straightness by a sadistic, perfumed, pretty hairdresser who made me feel inadequate in all respects as a woman except, of course, that I have a body like a shapely sack of bowling balls and she had tits like fried eggs. Hah. Now today I have a huge headache and an upset tummy and I'm taking the day off work because I don't get paid by the hour. Double hah.

I wasn't expecting much. I'd heard he wasn't touring with strings or horns, and that he was a wooden and uncertain performer who'd rather not perform - heard that after I'd bought the tickets, of course. But expectations be buggered, for it was a fucking good concert. A rich indie sound, though he's not, of course, he's EMI or Virgin or something. Great texture. Great rhythm. That three-and-a-half dimensional sound you get at a show carried out by people who understand fully how music works as a collaboration. And his voice - I didn't know this was possible with pop acts - is better live than on the albums, and him actually suggesting melody with it goes a long way to making up for the lack of all the recorded instruments.

The best songs to hear live were from A l'origine, an album I like but whose tracks sound much better - louder, angrier, faster, and in the case of 'Tant le ciel etait sombre'* scarier live than they do recorded. A l'origine was apparently a commercial disaster, Trash Yeye selling more in its first two weeks then A l'origine has ever sold, and I thought it was interesting that he played so many songs from an album that tanked. Except it wasn't interesting at all, because the songs seemed like they'd been written for live performance. Certainly more so than the pretty tinkliness of Rose Kennedy (though I'm a sucker for 'Les cerfs volants' and the MacBook Marylin singing 'The River of No Return' brought me close to tears) and the gloomy folk rants off Negatif, which both came before. Not to say the renditions of songs from those albums were lots worse than the songs from A l'origine, but they were different from the recorded versions. He'd arranged them in a way that was more appropriate for a live show and it was good.

As for him as a performer - maybe he got a bit more self-confidence since the last round of critiques. Because while he looked like a freestyle rapper who'd smoked a whole lotta spliffery, and while there was cynicism in his carriage and banter bespeaking an awareness of the absurdity of the audience/rock star dynamic, his musical delivery was fantastic, and not cynical. The right energy, the right pitch, the right emotion. And there were some honest to goodness rock star moments when I would have thrown my panties at the stage if I hadn't been wearing trousers, such as when he started playing the trumpet for 'Dans le Merco-Benz'.

It didn't hurt that he had a great four-piece backing him, of which the drummer was the most obviously great to me. It did hurt that the one backing voice he had was from a very breathy woman who was more sound effect than soprano. He used proper voices to great effect on Trash Yeye and there's no excuse for not ponying up a couple thousand extra dollars for a trained singer who can modulate her voice without sounding like she's just finished gagging on someone's dick. But then that sort of voice seems so popular in French music. I think it's part of their unhealthy gender dynamics, which one day I will write a series of extended angry blog entries about, because, you know, I can. Triple hah.

Also, while him playing the trumpet made me want to throw my panties at him, it also reminded me there wasn't enough trumpeting, that there weren't any strings. Okay, it was a good sound, but it would have been a sublime sound with them, particularly on 'Los Angeles', which was missing its lovely rise-and-fall line in the refrain. Finally, the show was hurt by 'Little Darlin'' not getting played so I could really indulge my SAD. It made me think maybe he needs a full time sampler. But he was a touch of a human sampler, trotting out the refrain to 'Clint Eastwood' while winding up 'Negatif' and making it sound like music to massacre to. And he sang 'As Time Goes By' and made it sound, and excuse me for the earthiness of it all, like music to make babies to. Another rock star moment, when I simultaneously congratulated and berated myself for wearing pants.

Verdict - buy all his shit and see him live.

*Which I think will be my theme tune for this round of seasonal affective disorder, because the ciel in this city is sombre - Jeebus fucking Murphy, Halloween and I already want to shoot myself - happy Halloween, by the way!