Christine of Christine and the Queens, in a pause between blowing out the rafters of the Ace Hotel last night, got confessional with us. She recalled once seeing people laughing and pointing at a homeless "freak," and admitted, "I'm a coward. I did nothing. But in this odd little job I've got," she said, "I get to make it up to him," thus introducing the song she'd written for him, St. Claude:
Christine (Heloise Letissier) has a physicality that drives her show, a string of tightly choreographed assaults of musical joy. Self-identified as pansexual, voice and moves inseparable, she is an instrument: she seems to play and be played through by her powerfully minimalist band as she dances out each song, whether she's in pounding four-on-the-floor disco mode, or in subtler stuff like this this cover of Beyonce's Sorry:
A galvanizing force in her native country's LGBT club scene, Christine charmed the Ace crowd with her Gallic sense of wryly distancing humor. "I'm coming out to you, Los Angeles," she announced. "I'm French." She seems poised to take over America, and if her next release contains anything as good as Tilted, my personal heavy rotation list-topper and the one that had the entire audience singing along, I bet she will.
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