Tuesday 09/05/06 Sebastien Tellier @ The Late Room, Manchester

From the ridiculous to the sublime, indeed, tonight will go down in Gigwise’s mind as something of a spectacle. Sebastien Tellier takes to the stage, and the lack lustre Manchester crowd, pull themselves from various booths and cubby holes dotted in a consciously nonchalant way around the venue, the majority stand, others sit in little groups close to the stage. Tellier takes a cigarette, lights it, and then notoriously, smokes it through his nose…

Opening with the melancholic splendour of ‘Universe’, the crowd are suitably gripped, Tellier’s broken vocal is inherent of the sadness conjured by the beautifully played piano, and yes we know he’s outlandish but its almost more saddening to watch him leave the stage and commence push ups within the crowd mid performance, but as hindsight will tell, this is a blissful moment.

Almost from the word go a bloke in the crowd is shouting for ‘La Ritournelle’, but unfortunately Tellier’s most well known track to date doesn’t feature in tonight’s set, we are however treated to a PA system which for the best part of the evening is having some kind of tantrum, a deafening amount of feedback from the mikes and a piano which has momentarily jumped on the band wagon and plain refused to play ball, (or music as the case may be); eventually its all gotten a little much for our eccentric Frenchman, he turns to the sound engineer and shouts “What! Are you Crazy? LSD or something?”

Yet in spite of the problems, Tellier still manages to do justice to what is ultimately a beautifully performed set, accompanied throughout by the talents of pianist Simon Dalmais, ‘Black Douleur’ is a rousing display of the classic piano/vocal duet and demonstrates perfectly the power behind the essentially simplistic combination. Harking back to early electronic advances makes ‘Broadway’ stand out as this evenings highlight, and ‘Bye Bye’ demonstrates Tellier’s incredible vocal talent.

He leaves the stage with demands for more, returning he asks “Will I play a French Song?” the Bloke who’s been shouting for ‘La Ritournelle’ all night changes the record and shouts “Play Frere Au Jacques!”  He declines the request and delivers a heart touching performance of Christophe’s ‘La Dolce Vitae’ instead.