La Roux

Back in April at the Coachella festival, I had to make a decision whether to venture alone to see Grizzly Bear, who I saw here in Atlanta at one of my favorite live shows ever, or to go with Kurt, Dan, Mikey, and Don to see La Roux. I had La Roux's cd and liked it, but was worried that live they would be a disappointment. But I was worried about ruining my memory of such an amazing show and decided to forgo Grizzly Bear again, and join my friends. Oddly, the La Roux concert was one of the surprises at the festival. It was a packed show and Elly, the lead singer, had boundless energy and enthusiasm. Everyone was singing along to the songs and having a blast. As it was a festival show, the set was a truncated 45 minutes and they left out a lot of the songs on the album that I enjoyed. I knew if they went on a more spacious US tour I wanted to see them again to get an even fuller experience.

Thankfully, La Roux announced their late summer early fall tour and Atlanta was on the list at the Variety Playhouse, which is a very intimate venue. Unfortunately, Elly's voice gave out on her halfway during the tour and they postponed the date for several months. In the meantime, their single "Bulletproof" found its way into the top 10 singles in the country and their popularity bloomed. They moved the concert from the Variety to the much larger Tabernacle. It is still a nice enough venue to have a good vantage point from most places inside, so we didn't worry.

Kurt and I planned on going with a huge group of people to the first scheduled date, but the reschedule ended up causing too many conflicts and it ended up only being us, Janis and her daughter Allie, and our friend Niki. We got there relatively early as we had no idea if there was an opening act or not. When we arrived, the venue was barely a quarter full, but it was already filling up with various hipsters and drunk sorority girls, all dressed in their most bizarre outfits.

It turned out there was an opening act, Francis and the Lights. And to say they were horrible would have been a compliment. I never try to let an opening band dictate how I feel about an evening, but some of these bands I like really need to put a little more effort into who they select. They were two men, both dressed like goth descendents of Adam Ant. One sang and pressed play a lot on his keyboard, while the other guy sort of noodled on a guitar. The music sounded like really bad bedsit R&B, and the singer's performance ran the gamut from maudlin, vacant posing to strangely acting like he was possessed by James Brown and Michael Jackson. It was bizarre. To our relief, they played a very short set.

After a short intermission, La Roux came out and performed....the exact same 45 minute set from Coachella. Unfortunately, by Grizzly Bear fear came true for this show. Instead of enhancing my experience from the festival, La Roux disappointed by by not even one new song, or even one of the left out songs from the album. They only have the one cd anyway, you would think they could at least play all the songs off of it. All of the songs are electronic, so there is no loss of sound from something like an orchestra. It was very disappointing. Once I realized that the show was going to have no surprises I finally just got over it and tried to enjoy it. I probably would have if the sound was better. The vocals were muffled for the first few songs, then we figured out that she was using backing tapes on songs where she had to hit really high notes. At that point, I was glad it was going to be a short set. I was done.

Thankfully, we at least got out at a decent hour. We were back at my place by 10:30 pm. Unless La Roux comes out with a fantastic second cd and really ups the showmanship factor for their tour, I will not be needed to see them again anytime soon.

Here are a few clips I found from the show. Don't get me wrong, aside from the brevity of the show and the sometimes use of backing vocals, Elly puts on a fun show, and you can tell she is very happy to be on stage and has so many people that enjoy her music.