What with it being the continent (albeit the end to suffer our soggy weather) and with it now being the Sabbath, Saint-Cloud has all but shut up shop. Even the automated entries of Lidl are sealed like locked lips. Unfortunate, as rations of both the calorific and alcoholic varieties run low given the refreshingly lax ruling on where you can and can't take supplies once inside. Unsurprising, then, that most British pockets are consequently lined with a selection of some of France's finest bargain-basement wares. Whispering, quintessentially radio-molesting indie hi-hats, androgynous boy/girl wailing, and only one vaguely memorable synth hook in the polished guise of that which glimmers within Punching In A Dream renders
The Naked And Famous fairly insignificant.
Faris'
Cat's Eyes meanwhile, despite drawing a scant few twig-like waifs, shine far brighter despite their darkened demeanour. Badwan's in breton stripes, accomplice/acquaintance/amant Rachel Zeffira is shoeless as per, and they run through a record's worth with competence, guile, and staggering musical adroitness. The side of stage is crammed with as many Horrors and hangers-on as there are watching from the trampled grass before the duo, today propped up by a handful of backing singers, guitars, drums, and bassist toting Lennon shades and facial hair evocative of that walrus he once wrote of. Wiry pawnshop guitar lines doused in haunting swathes of reverb dominate the confrontational Bandit and the noirish Face In The Crowd, while Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd number Lucifer Sam sounds rather akin to Strange House-era Horrors. However it's the pair's more subdued moments that truly woo: from the lyrically post-breakup, orchestrally sumptuous Not A Friend to celebrated guttural hymn I Knew It Was Over, Badwan and Zeffira come across all sorts of spectacular, even in broad daylight. There's an unerring menace in his eyes however, and the fires are stoked when an unwanted, incomprehensible voice chirps up in the monitors. "We've got a new friend. We haven't met them. Yet." The vibraphone-led I'm Not Stupid meanwhile is perhaps the weekend's most meek instant, yet simultaneously quite probably its most magnificent.
A brief peruse of
The La's' Wikipedia page reveals that Gary Murphy is Lee Mavers' only remaining sidekick, while the band's past members number twenty-one. Mavers himself isn't looking all too resplendent these days as he blurts out patience-testing opener Son of a Gun from a jaw of teeth that too look as though they'd rather be elsewhere, awry, snaggled, and vying for flight. Many make their own way from the speaker stack vicinity prior to a lacklustre There She Goes (for some reason unbeknownst devoid of percussive accompaniment today), before droves follow in the wake of its disappointment. The days of military garb and excessive melodrama under the guise of emo for
My Chemical Romance have evidently well and truly set, as Gerard Way bounds out onto the Grande Scène in some sort of prepubescent, preppy American Football jersey thing, his face partially coated in an almost luminescent scarlet following a botched D.I.Y. dye job. And with that any guilt-edged enjoyment has too dripped away, Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na blah blah blah) soaked in insipid Beastie Boys brattishness. Planetary (GO!) is particularly extraordinary, opening with sirens that hurtle towards a nondescript instrumental chorus, and by the midpoint of the Romany slant to Mama (Christmas bells 'n' all), forget going to hell; you feel as though you're already there.
Meanwhile in a parallel cosmos, in some psych sphere of Dante's Paradiso, Rhys Webb guides
The Horrors through what Hunter S. Thompson's brain must have believed it looked like from the inside out throughout the sixties. Baggy and bang-on for the duration of their 11-song stint, Webb's clunky bass lines dictate the pace, and it's a racy, palpitating one at that, commencing with the already-anthemic Changing The Rain, and drawing to its logical conclusion with the monumental Moving Further Away. Within, Scarlet Fields is more whacked-out than ever before; the rolling Krautrock of Sea Within A Sea more tempestuous; Mirror's Image unhinged as Faris returns to the Scène Pression Live with that idiosyncratic look of contempt of his and, this time around, a cropped leather jacket to offset Webb's technicolour smock and guitarist Joshua Hayward's German military parka. They've probably never looked quite so incongruous, nor sounded so victorious.
Despite selling out those O2 seats closer to an astral Paradise than to the stage, adorable chart nuisance
Tinie Tempah, you'd have imagined, may not have had the same impact in la belle France. References to Scunthorpe, All Saints dresses, and daytime TV chatterbox Trisha are sure to sink without trace, although judging by the number of W's thrown skywards during a thankfully Goulding-less Wonderman, if Tempah can consider London to have been all but entirely disturbed by the likes of Pass Out and Frisky, Paris too has been at least partially distressed tonight.
Anders
Trentemøller needed little introduction prior to unleashing the genre-smiting fury of latest LP Into The Great Wide Yonder, and it's slabs of apocalyptic electronica lifted from said record that enthral predominantly. If
his Sónar show earlier on in the estival season offered a seductive visual feast, on this leaden eve it's the tremolo shrill of The Mash And The Fury, the fraught percussion of Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider Go!!!, the eroticism of ...Even Though You're With Another Girl, the treated bleeps and Fender screeches of Shades Of Marble that further evidence Trentemøller's ability to mark out unchartered sonic landscapes, sticking the flag in, and sweatily, strutting away triumphant.
Irrespective of how many times it's been witnessed, lauded and celebrated across the continent, the current
Lykke Li show, all black drapes, Silent Shout samples and still-astonishing Wounded Rhymes material, continues to spellbind. Zachrisson is almost inordinately vogue as she stands encircled by her musical minions, small yet irrevocably centrifugal and with the songs, style and sass all set, progressively greater stages await.
Equipped with a consummate concoction of headlining stars and preeminent upstarts, and with the Eurostar beckoning Paris ceaselessly closer to London, Rock en Seine is certainly more than qualified to muck in with Europe's finest.
