I’m a bit behind today. Sorry for that, but I have spent the morning scrolling through all the various blogs and websites that attended last night’s Charlotte Gainsbourg show at The Bell House and I kind of feel like the coverage of the event has been blown out of proportion. Now I understand that last night was Charlotte’s first ever New York performance and likely her first ever show for paying customers, but just because of the special nature of the performance and the fact that Wayne Coyne showed up to watch the show does not make it the greatest concert of all time as all the other sites would have you believe. Instead what we saw on The Bell House stage last night was a performer that was nervous, quiet, and terribly shy - spending most of the set hiding behind her hair while standing at the microphone and the other half sitting on a stool gently crooning along with her band.
Starting with opening act Dean & Britta, the show last night was a subtle affair with hushed, whispering that took the place of singing, and a sound system that was as quiet as I have heard in New York in ages. For the opening set most of the crowd provided a huge din that over shadowed the nuance of Dean & Britta and forced their set to be skewed by my disdain over the folks that spent $30 just to have a conversation. Normally that doesn’t matter when I go to shows, the sound system is usually so loud you couldn’t talk over it if you tried, but last night was meant to be something else and I truly wish people would have been able to restrain themselves from ruining a performance that could have been somewhat magical.
They know how to put on a show. ‘Course they do. They’ve been doing it for what seems like decades. In fact, some may argue, they’ve been doing the same show for the past ten years. Now, although that’s sort of true, each time they have new songs and new tricks. And even though you know all this and have seen them before, it’s still a thrill when they emerge from inside a giant screen, Wayne Coyne does his giant space bubble thing, and the band open with Race for the Prize, in a riot of cannon-fired ticker tape, streamers and balloons. So much that you almost don’t notice how good that song is. Then it’s on with the show as the balloons continue to bounce around the venue, old classics tumble out, the green lasers and the big gong make their appearance, and there’s a lot of fun going down.
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