I was just perusing the video section on GBH.tv and found this new Yelle video for La Musique:
This thing mesmerized me. Not only is Yelle's sound a lot more mature since I last heard her material, but the video seems to match it perfectly. I knew it was going to be a pretty interesting video from the beginning – it starts out with cut-outs of sumo wrestlers moving around on planets in a galaxy. Then you spot the heads of Kanye and Michael Jordan in a corner, and the entire thing explodes into cut-outs of pop culture icons moving around and dancing in a watercolored fade all over the place. Everything from the Brazil Jesus statue hula-hooping to Clint Eastwood, the Taj Mahal, and Justin Bieber have cameos. At one point a flaming car flies from the sky into a camper, which then explodes into a mountain of kittens. Paris Hilton sits on a huge version of her chihuahua. Popsicles fly through the air as cats play guitars on icebergs. Finally at 1:20 I realized that the whole thing was strikingly similar to the feel in one of my favorite videos of all time, Leave Me Alone by Michael Jackson:
Usually I question interpretations that are this close, but then I saw the Yelle video close with this little nod:
Awesome. Especially since Bubbles is heavily featured in his video. Thumbs up to Yelle, can't wait to hear the whole album. She's playing Highline Ballroom on 4th November; buy tickets! If her performance was incredible 3 years ago, think of how it will be this time around with this new material.
Last night, Pak, Faris, Ben and I went to the Knitting Factory to see Yelle. Let me start with an order of events to explain why I was so excited.
After I wrote this entry about Para One a few months ago, my friend Dylan Trees (of We are the Hollow Men fame) wrote to one of his French friends, asking for a list of similar bands /artists from France. Within that list that he forwarded onto me was Yelle. I did a YouTube search for her and came across this video:
I could not stop giggling. I saved it in my favorites for future days that might need a lift.
Two or three weeks ago, I read a bulletin post by Calvin Harris (he's the one who produced that Mitchell Brothers video and wrote this insanely danceable song) saying "This is how kids dance in France." The attached video had the same kind of dance moves in it! I instantly showed my friend Alex and asked her about it... she told me that it's called Tektonik and is so popular that kids have dance battles in their school quads and in the middle of the street. She even pulled up a video of 12 year-old boys Tektonik battling.
Well, it turns out that Pak's cousin works for the record label that signed Yelle. When he asked if I was interested, I almost flew out of my seat. A few minutes later, I read this about the show on Flavorpill. I was excited for Kap10Kurt and Lauren Flax as well (Kap10Kurt has been promoted on GBH before, and Lauren Flax's remix of CYOA has been featured on the site also). excited!
We got there after Lauren Flax, which was sad but since she is around a lot I am optimistic about seeing her in the semi near future. Kap10Kurt was great. He made wearing a keyboard around his body look like the most comfortable thing in the world. He ended with Dangerseekers, which is the track of his that I am familiar with.
After 15 or 20 minutes, Yelle came out to a crowd of people pretty much going insane. They were so excited. She was wearing what looked like five of those gold Brooklyn Industries backpacks stitched together into a hoodie.
She had so much energy. Up until the end of her encore, she was bouncing around, playing air guitar, banging on drums and fist pumping. The two guys with her (one on drums, one on a Korg) had just as much energy. Her set reminded me of a combination of Annie's cute pop flare and Uffie's badass attitude.
The show was fantastic, and she had everybody jumping, clapping and snapping the entire time. When she sang A Cause Des Garçons (the song from that Tektonik video up there), I caught a lot of it on video (if you don't want to watch the whole thing, it gets pretty good around 26 seconds):
We got to meet Pak's cousin at the end; she was really sweet and I was thankful to her and Pak that we were able to get into a sold-out show. She looked like a modern-day, French Susan Dey in black Freestyles. What a great combination.
Thank you times infinity to Pak :) That was the best Tuesday night I've had in months and months.
[all images taken from each person's MySpace page and saved to my server to prevent future broken images... Susan Dey and Freestyles images came from here and here, respectively]
