I’ve been listening to the new album from Christine & The Queens a fair bit over the last month and it’s been growing on me a lot. I’ve been playing ‘Tilted’ and ‘iT’ on my TXFM show since the start of the year but the Héloïse Letissier’s music was only starting to click recently.
Now, her performance on Later With Jools Hollland this week has sealed the deal (as her videos suggest). This is one of those times when an artist propels themselves onto the next level, and TV is the best way to do that for a performer.
And what a performance this is. The music is real, and this performance is one of those joyous experiences that few artists can manage, simultaneously entertaining you and doing what the best artists do, showing you who they are.
Then comes part two, when ‘Tilted’ ends, Letisser shouts “Prince” and the song that the purple one wrote for Chaka Khan, ‘I Feel For You’, a track that still has a modern dancefloor potency rings out and the dancers move with a happiness that is infectious in the way Prince’s performances also were.
Letissier’s dance moves (and her dancers) are the kind that we feel we all have in us, not rigid but free and expressive with the music. That kind of vibrancy is what a lot of people who go clubbing want. Prince would have approved, just like he did in person with Janelle Monae at the BET Awards in 2010.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
