Yahoo! Music Review

Gig played on 24/01/09

Last year's Eurovision winner (well, in our eyes anyway) Sebastien Tellier is attempting to put into practice his own unique notion of art, something that "Crossfades between very light and very deep. Just deep, it's very boring. And just light is okay for two minutes, but straight after you forget it." That's why, between songs, the straggly-haired Gallic popster is stumbling about the stage with the appearance of a man pitched somewhere between Frank Gallagher from "Shameless" and an open-shirted '80s lothario, necking from a bottle of wine and mumbling about chicken and sausages.

Sebastien Tellier is, of course, a genuinely eccentric performer. His albums are high on concept, like his 2006 record "Politics" and his current full-length, the one from which he derives most of tonight's set, "Sexuality". Without concept, claims Tellier, albums are nothing but naff compilations. Thing is, tonight he doesn't quite fit into his Mr Sexuality character.

In front of a largely French crowd, Tellier focuses a leetle too much on the light and not enough on the deep, overshadowing his '80s-inspired music with too many comedy quips - many of them in French, so we'll have to take the crowd's guffaws at face value. Tellier is so wildly distracted that he admonishes himself on more than one occasion, saying "Jesus, please give me some hope." That he doesn't drive on in the golf buggy he procured for last year's Eurovision performance is perhaps more of a surprise than it should be given his fantastic albums.

That isn't to say he completely misses the mark. Some songs still shine like a brand new Sinclair C5. Opener "Kilometer" puts to shame Kanye West's vocoder voice and ends in a jam thrillingly reminiscent of The Revolution. On the night Britain voted Emperors Of Soul off our own Eurovision list, Tellier sings "Divine", which, with its sugary "shoops" and prog outro, sounds better than anything Jarvis has done in years. "Une Heure" is the lascivious sound of Flock Of Seagulls backing Serge Gainsbourg that he always intended it and "La Ritournelle" glistens softly - only for Tellier to joke that he stole it off a friend because "I was stronger".

With his mind elsewhere, the rest of the set plods along, especially on the interminably indulgent '80s synth-romp "Ketchup vs Genocide", and the evening descends into a bout of drunken silliness, with Tellier eventually unzipping his flies. Which is fine for a light entertainer, but we expected something more substantial.

by Chris Parkin