Quarter Life Crisis
The world according to Sven-S. Porst
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Nouvelle Vague¶
250 words on Music
Yesterday brought a rather spontaneous visit to a gig of the French band Nouvelle Vague. Around six a friend asked me whether I was interested on iChat and two hours later we were in a car to Kassel where the concert took place. I hadn’t heard of the band before, and couldn’t find a web page but there seem to have been a favourable newspaper article or two recently, which meant that many ‘old’ people turned up.
Basically, they’re playing a lot of cover versions from the 1980s. Enjoy, for example, Love will tear us apart sung by a girl and played on an acoustic guitar in the slightly annoying style and pickup technique that you know from the Kings of Convenience. Apparently this whole scheme was made up by two French musicians, who then asked a couple of girls to do the singing.
However, the show works the other way round: Two girls do the show and the singing in a cool and entertaining way while the guys sat almost invisibly in the background and played the guitars. While I’m not into the whole cover version thing and I’m not sure the CD would be good for listening at home (except for hungover Sundays, perhaps), I must say that the show was really good. The only thing that irritated me was the Powerbook they had there and made occasional use of for extra effects and sound. I’m not too fond of that in what’s essentially an acoustic concert.
