Live Eye
Chromeo @ The Opera House, March 23
BY Dave Morris March 24, 2008 10:03
Has any band’s rise been more unpredictable than Chromeo’s? A year ago,
a sold-out Opera House confronted by the sight of two Montreal guys
playing ‘80s-style disco-funk would have been saying “Chro-meee-who?”
Instead, “Chro-meee-ohhh, ohhhhh ohhh!” rang out pretty much any time
Dave 1 and Pee Thugg weren’t playing, even during their between-song
banter. The crowd were like football hooligans on ecstasy, screaming
for tunes from last year’s Fancy Footwork and dancing like
newly-liberated chimpanzees. The typical Chromeo concertgoer is hard to
pin down, but judging from Saturday’s show, their fans are
predominantly young, fashionable but not aggressively so, and not above
busting a move. In an era when dance music either means Ed
Banger's electro-house (our generation’s answer to happy hardcore)
or mediocre dance-rock (opening act Let’s Go To War, our generation’s
answer to the Red Hot Chili Peppers — shirtlessness and all), there’s
an untapped market for a more soulful strain of electronic dance music,
and Chromeo are cleaning up.
Anyone who’s seen The Time’s appearances in Purple Rain knows how easy it is to get swept off their feet by a well-executed slab of electro-funk, and Fancy Footwork — and to a lesser extent, She's In Control
— are riddled with them. The songs manage to be both slavishly
imitative and vibrantly original at the same time — from the vocodered vox of “Me
& My Man” to the string pads and clattering hand claps of "Fancy Footwork," they’re loaded with signifiers of the era, but if you stripped
away all the production, these tunes would still hold up. Look for Chromeo Unplugged in an imaginary record store near you.
The only major flaw in what was otherwise a sweaty workout of a set,
punctuated by their elaborate stage setup with five glowing poles
covered in multi-coloured LEDs and smoke machines right out of an '80s video, was that although Dave 1 frequently busted out his
guitar and Pee Thugg busied himself with keyboard licks as well as two
or three cymbals and percussion, the lack of a full band felt like a
mistake. The slick clavinet in “Tenderoni,” the funky basslines, all of
them became disembodied licks played on a backing track, which is
almost always lame. If they can count on selling out mid-sized venues,
and most of their sounds are easily reproducible (or near enough for a
concert) on modern synths, there’s no reason they can’t hire a few
other players to fill out the parts. It would elevate their show from
good to great, though in that regard throwing in a brief cover of the
first verse of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” didn’t hurt. They might
have embraced songwriting, but they’ll probably retain that ironic
twist until the end.
625 Church St, 6th Floor, Toronto M4Y 2G1
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