From Iceland — Tellier: The French Eargasm

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Having high expectations is an almost sure-fire way to be let down and when I entered Rúbín for the Sebastien Tellier concert my expectations were sky-high. When I first heard his newest album, Sexuality, it awoke in me a strong, inexplicable urge to visit a shady café, find a scrumptious young au-pair and invite her back to my house for a grimey party for two (unfortunately for me Reykjavík is sadly lacking in savoury young nannies who frequent dubious establishments waiting for bored young men to woo them). The album left me with a strong sense of excitement and optimism for the upcoming concert. I was not let down.
Warming up was Óttar Proppé, dj-ing some slow tunes. The atmosphere was very peculiar by Icelandic standards. People were rather orderly, only moderately drunk and romance lay in the air like a heavy smog over the room. I was surrounded on all sides by couples who switched between cradling each other and tongue wrestling. Although such nauseating displays of affection usually bring forth a pessimistic bitterness in me, they became bearable if not downright romantic after Tellier came on stage. Smoking and drinking on stage and telling jokes between songs with that irresistible French accent of his, he had the crowd hanging on to his every word. “Zee next song is about love, ovcoorse, betwean mahn and… rhobot”. Honestly, could this man be any cooler? Shoving the microphone into his underwear and then licking it furiously, slowly unbuttoning his pants and letting the crow caress him. Under any other circumstances people would avoid middle-aged, bearded men caressing themselves in public. But this was special. Magical even. This was Sébastien Tellier.
Sébastien and his band of über-hip Franks played together beautifully and gave the crowd exactly what they wanted. Calm yet danceable, grimey while at the same time sophisticated, Tellier is not just another Daft Punk wannabe but rather a worthy heir, taking Parisian electro in a new, erotic direction