Some bands announce their arrival in your universe by way of explosion. Duchess Says is one of them. I had been looking forward enormously to this gig ever since I first heard Anthologie des 3 Pechoirs a few weeks ago. It is an album that stands up and demands that you notice it, with its huge bass sound and marvellous electronic effects. If you have ever heard Robert Rodriguez’s theme music for Planet Terror, then you have an idea of their sound. Above all, though, it is the voice of Annie-Claude that you really pay attention to, especially the fierceness with which she screams out some of the songs.
In person, she is actually a petite waif, especially when standing beside the towering Ismael on keyboards. She giggles a lot, speaks in an engaging French-Canadian accent, and her on-stage persona borders on art-house pretentious, with her strange hand and body movements while she sings, not to mention lying down on the floor at one stage and climbing up through the seats for the final song. Her confidence is impressive. Yet, again, though, it is the sudden and intense burst of lungpower that she can generate when she sings that still manages to surprise you, even after a dozen listens to the album.
Last night, the band had to overcome two big obstacles. Firstly, the venue did not suit them at all! Annie-Claude was appalled. “This is new. I have never played to people sitting down before”, she laughingly protested. I know what she means. This is a band that wants to rock the living bejaysus out of the place, not play cabaret style to a well-mannered audience! The second issue was that their keyboards failed and that was always going to hurt their sound badly. The excellent Rabies (Baby’s Got The) was a notable casualty, while an experiment of going with two guitars was quickly shelved following some unrecognisable white noise of a song.
That said, if this is the band feeling a little like fish out of water and playing with the metaphorical one hand behind their back, they still managed to be stunning. I cannot recall a more powerful and dynamic pair of songs played back-to-back in the recent past than Tenen Non Neu and Ccut Up. The ferocity they put into the curt CH.O.B. was almost frightening. I could not help but feel that I was witnessing a band whose trajectory is bound for the stratosphere. It did feel special. A diamond in the rough.
The only people that I felt sorry for on the night were the very fine Octopus Project! How to follow that?
Filed under: Gigs, Music | Tagged: Duchess Says
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