When we recently spoke with Yann Tiersen, he professed feelings of excitement and anxiety when interrogated on his attitude towards the live show, despite this week's two contrasting, yet consistently excellent London shows being merely a few notches added to an innumerable number gradually totting up those he's already played. Tomorrow evening Tiersen has a headline show at Camden's glorious Roundhouse to relish, although tonight concerns the intimate, and ambling on with a can of 1664 in hand, Neu! graffiti-like artwork emblazoned garishly across his chest, his nervous concerns show. If he's previously had to deal with public revolt, there's not even the faintest whiff of disgust on the fringes of Brick Lane, as a beastly queue snakes away from the Old Truman Brewery, the picturesquely tatty space the wonderful Rough Trade now calls home. It's perhaps a slightly shaky start, and Tiersen's charming, comical badinage later reveals his fragile, hungover state, perhaps a direct result of consistent alcohol intake since his arrival in the UK and possibly the reason for the wavering in his voice during a stripped back, if only periodically crude take on Monuments.
Tiersen and his five-piece backing band ease fluently into stride however, like a glitzy automobile churning through the gears, and Ashes, lifted from previous LP and his current fave Dust Lane, is infinitely enhanced when undressed and readdressed with comparatively minimal, acoustic orchestration. Indeed devoid of lavish string sections and his beloved "fucking noise", although Tiersen's vocal capabilities aren't explicitly exposed as all songs are crooned en masse, these tender takes patently unveil the raw abstraction of his lyrical work. I'm Gonna Live Anyhow (led by a peculiarly diminutive guitar) follows, its steamy Animal Collective-esque atmospherics exchanged for an altogether more choral arrangement, before Tiersen finally unearths his violin to deliver a radical reinterpretation of The Gutter. Consequently a sea of luminous smartphone screens emerge, Tiersen's bow becoming increasingly wispy and, as such, increasingly reminiscent of his tousled hairdo. Bizarre enough as it may be for the Frenchman to have a stab at a cover (a quirky, swirling impression of Gary Numan's Cars, a recording of which may be experienced below), an encore at an instore is stranger still and following a stunning, if unerringly boybandish acoustic rerun of The Trial, they return to bash out Fuck Me. In close proximity and bereft of Gaelle Kerrien's breezy feminine coo, transfixion on Tiersen as he warbles lyrics of ejaculation is something of an uncomfortable episode in the way that Leslie Feist informing all on where her beau will and won't go, on what they will and won't do is slightly discomposing, yet even on this pygmy stage Yann looks incontestably comfortable. Yann Tiersen - Cars by killtheatlas
As he is, equally irrefutably, in Camden's finest haunt. The crowd he attracts is distinctly cosmopolitan, a rich tapestry of mangled linguistic melée uttered over the sounds of Pavement and Phoenix as we anxiously await. This multiculturalism is reflected in Tiersen's tipple of choice for this Thursday eve, countless bottles of San Miguel lining the stage. As he himself revealed earlier on in the week, the setlist relies copiously on material from his two most recent oeuvres and although the stage may be decked out like a neon reimagining of the Skyline sleeve, his predilection for Dust Lane shows, a stirring, vocally striking Till The End instantly enthralling. Esther is Tiersen at his most Gallic, dual melodicas powering, and indeed empowering the track, while Palestine throbs with vocoded portentousness and analogue synth mutilation that suggests his admiration for, and adoration of, both Jean Michel Jarre and Kraftwerk. If Fuck Me proved somewhat awkward in close Rough Trade propinquity, tonight it sounds anthemic enough to send shivers down the spine of Camden High Street; the raggedy Amy wavers in gusts of dear naïveté; and Ashes once more manifestly reveals Yann's knack for outrightly cinematic composition. However it's when he sinks his nicotine-tinted teeth into material from his quite superb latest long-player that he soars: from the majestic I'm Gonna Live Anyhow, to the GY!BE-evocative apocalyptica of The Gutter (sorrow-stricken violin strains complimented immaculately by downcast grayscale visuals), there's a rough and ready je ne sais quoi tearing through the heart of it, bursts of noise periodically thrashed out during strobe downpour, hacking up sometime organic, orchestral tranquility. For Tiersen treads a tightrope that leads from the acoustic to the electronic, and perhaps more accurately tonight, electronica, this symbiosis precarious without ever straying into the realms of the perilous as he delves deep into the categorically avant-garde. The xylophonic plinks of Another Shore, akin to the sound of heavenly teardrops rebounding up off corrugated iron roofing, signal the start of an encore much clamoured for, before they're in turn ripped open by a devastating hurricane of frenzied guitar pressure. Cars is once again dredged up having been witlessly neglected by BBC 6Music, and wisely, The Trial is again incarnated in the most delicate aesthetic imaginable. Were a film worthy of these lusciously expansive, emotionally saturated soundscapes ever set to celluloid it'd doubtless sweep up at every last film festival, just as Tiersen has swept me off my feet over these past few days.
