Rocking out auf Franzoesisch

Phoenix were pretty cool. It was my first time at abart, so I was happy to find it was a smallish room with a small slightly raised platform for the stage. Pretty young crowd, but them being the polite Swiss type we were able to get to about row two for the support (Housse de Racket) and row four for Phoenix. At least to begin with...

After nursing my beer for a while and crowd-watching, my friend and I noticed two very scrawny fellows with dubious fashion sense making their way through the sparse crowd. They were both wearing tennis whites, perspex tennis visors and terry-towling arm bands. My friend and I cocked an eyebrow (each, we didn't cock one together) until we spotted them clambering up on to the stage — it was Housse de Racket, who proceeded to punch out some french-fueled, tennis-driven and -themed pop armed with only a guitar, drum kit, sequencer and the support of their father, who appeared to be standing in the front row, bopping along. I'm not sure whether it was the speed of delivery of their lyrics or the simple fact that I can't understand a word of French, but I really had no idea what was going on. They were having enough fun for all of us however, and I was glad to join in on their theme song (whimsically titled "Housse de Racket") which consisted of verses rapped in furious French, interspersed with a chorus of the entire crowd yelling "Housse de Racket" at the tops of their lungs.

After nursing a couple more beers and watching Housse de Racket dismantle their equipment, Phoenix rocked up. I wasn't really prepped enough for their set — I hadn't been able to listen to ANY of their songs before the show, so although I enjoyed most of it, most of the tracks washed over me like so much pop-rock flotsam. Which isn't to say they didn't rock, nor that I didn't rock with them. They played a piece just before their encore which had Thomas Mars wailing into a microphone through several extremely glitchy, reverby filters, which pleased me immensely.

However, the encore (such an appropriate term for such a French evening) was the coup de grace (such an appropriate etc.). It was clear by this stage that Phoenix had been having an excellent time, were in excellent spirits and didn't really want to finish up. After a couple of acoustic numbers (one of which was apparently authored with Air, and before which the lead singer took great pains to explain to us that Phoenix was NOT a cover band), the whole band rocked out some more with Thomas jumping off the stage to stalk past me through the audience, dragging his microphone cord and singing... something emo. Although I was close enough to smell his sweaty locks, my appointment with destiny was thwarted by a flock of shrieking 17-to-20-year-old Zürcherinnen. Awesome.

Not to be outdone, Housse de Racket climbed back onto the stage and I participated in my first crowd-surfing-French-rocker experience. Awesome x 2.

Photo Credit

Phoenix - Lollapalooza 2012 by Kate Gardiner. (cc 2.0) by-nc