5/26/14 - Nantes, France, Stereolux

I'm still under the spell of the concert and even though I'm a bit tired, I want to practice my English, so here is my review :

Since Nico told me that the concert was sold out, I prefered acting cautiously yesterday. So, my sister and I left Angers quite early to be in front of the venue by 6 p.m. After having a snack, we entered the Stereolux when its doors opened at 7:30 p.m. In order to attend the concert under the best possible conditions, we chose the exact same spot as you guys : front row and halfway between the mikes and the piano ; and actually, we didn’t have to hurry because people were oddly giving priority to the seats on the balcony !

The opening act was Juana Molina, a singer-songwriter from Argentina. Her music was a curious but interesting blend of electronics, folk-blues & rock with many synth, guitar and vocal loops recorded on stage and some cool hypnotic rhythms on drums too. Though sometimes the pileup of loops sounded pretty messy, I rather enjoyed their 45-minute performance.

After a 15-minute break when the roadies were settling and checking everything, Chan finally appeared on stage, saying "Bonsoir". At this very moment, I realized it was the first time I was attending a solo performance and the sound of her heels on the stage really took me back to the « Don’t Look Back » final scene when Bob is making his stage entrance to rapturous applause in a thin halo of light. It was the same kind of magical and intimate mood ! In addition, as Nico said, she was indeed gorgeous !

The concert started with "Old Detroit" as an incense stick was burning on the head of her guitar, making Chan often coughing off-mike until she gave it to someone in the audience. As always, the show was divided into three parts : guitar, piano and then back to guitar. As far as I can remember, her set was rarely disrupted (a tiny struggle with the mikes at the beginning, a few waves at the sound engineers, some wrong chords here and there but quickly turned into transitions between songs and especially, no songs cut short, but I might be wrong). There were many requests from the crowd ("Rockets", "Blue", "Nude As The News", "He War", "Cherokee"...) but none of them were played except "Say" and "Sea Of Love" which, I guess, would have been played anyway.

My highlights of the show were "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", "Say", "The Moon" and of course most of the piano part and especially "LET ME GO", "I Don't Blame You" & "Maybe Not" but to be honest, any of her renditions was haunting enough for me last night ! "Framboise Je T'aime" brought her two-hour performance to an end and it was time for mutual thanks. As usual, Chan threw white roses in the crowd and... gave me her piano setlist (as if the few smiles she gave me throughout the show weren't enough !).

It was a magical moment, perfect in its imperfections.

Probably, my favorite concert so far. 

Here is the piano setlist : As you can see, all of the songs haven't been played but these are hints on which ones could be played soon !