Nouvelle Vague

The Queens Hall Edinburgh 10th February 2008

So this might come as a bit of a surprise given my recent bitching about cover versions; a night out with Parisian style merchants- Nouvelle Vague. The premise is pretty simple- 80s new wave and post punk classics done in a bossa-nova style. (Nouvelle vague means New wave in French and bossa-nova in Portuguese- now that is one big box of coincidence.) My bitching was pretty much Radio One’s fault- fresh off the back of the success of 2006’s Live Lounge album, the bloated old media cockers at the beeb made the fairly predictable mistake of flogging a dead horse until it’s lifeless bloody stump fell, and then froze, stiff as a board in the newly fallen snow, like they do in the frozen wastes of Siberia. The result (after a long year listening to that shit everyday on the radio) was the unspeakable dirge that is Live Lounge 2; a dreadful shambolic collection of badly chosen, craply arranged and mostly piss poor covers of modern songs. I could go on but just have a listen and tell me if you don’t want to pour brandy in your ears by the end of it. The point is, I’m not against covers per se (in fact I feel a top ten covers list coming on...) and I’m even a fan of the single style covers bands- Richard Cheese (lounge), Brian Seltzer Orchestra (Rockabilly), the mighty Dread Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin reggae style by an Elvis impersonator), so my appearance at the Nouvelle Vague concert wasn’t really that surprising. When I got there though, I suddenly had misgivings. The Queen’s hall is a soulless venue at the best of times, and this was an Edinburgh 30 something crowd on a Sunday night. Not a group known for dressing up as dancers from les folies bergere whilst knocking back absinthe, smoking cigars and having seedy sexual encounters before the consumption gets them. The mood was sombre, with an undercurrent of ‘this better be finished by 10.30 cause I’ve gotta get home to iron my work blouse’. It was a pretty slow starter too, in spite of the band being fronted by two gorgeous women. It didn’t take them too long to win us over though, and by the time The Dead Kennedy’s Too Drunk to Fuck came around, we were all well and truly smitten. You just couldn’t stay frosty in the face of all that good natured, uncontrived sexiness, and the most curious selection of 80s songs never to be heard on Radio Norwich. The old goth in me was in Nostagia heaven, with songs from The Lords of the New Church (Dance with me), The Cramps (Human fly), The Sisters of Mercy (Marian), Killing Joke (Psyche), The Cure (A Forest) and the piece de resistance Bauhaus’s Bela Lugosi’s dead. All mixed down with smooth lounginess and bossa-nova beats the audience were pretty much transfixed well before the first encore. And although no one cracked open the absinthe, we left the concert feeling hot and fuzzy inside, and I wasn't the only one lighting a fat imaginary cigar as I left the building.