Photo: Press
They say that music, like love, is a universal language. Quite who ‘they’ are and how often they say it remains unclear, however, tonight Francois and the Atlas Mountains prove that there is more than a semblance of truth in the well worn cliché.
At this point, it is worth explaining to the uninitiated that Francois and the Atlas Mountains is the musical project of bilingual Frenchman (and presumed Anglophile) Francois Marry. As such 90% of tonight’s songs are sung entirely in Marry’s mother tongue. Not to be perturbed, and armed with a grade B GCSE in French Gigwise, awaited the five-piece’s arrival on the tiny stage (which was, Marry admitted, “too small to dance on... so you’ll have to dance for us”) with baited-breath.
Playing a setlist consisting mainly of numbers from their most recent record Piano Ombre, the worldwide language of impeccable melodies infused with in-the-pocket Afrobeat rhythms proved infectious to those gathered in the live room of Hoxton Square’s Bar and Kitchen.
When songs as well crafted as Summer of a Heart and Les Plus Beaux play out in front of you in a haze of improvisation and virtuoso musicianship it matters not that the vast majority of the lyrics, at least to this uncouth hack, remain incomprehensible. Then there is the visual spectacle; on a number of occasions, mid-song, the band launches into wonderfully shambolic, semi-choreographed dance.
The outburst that manifests itself during the Prince-esque disco-funk of 'La verite Such' is particularly captivating. Such effervescence has always been a feature of the band’s live shows so will have come has no surprise to those that have seen them live on previous occasions, but the unabashed sense of childlike mischief that sees the band perform such moves is positively endearing, On a night when messrs Clegg and Farage engaged in futile, vacuous debate about the UK’s relationship with Europe a far more effective indictment of the positives of maintaining a close (musical) union with our continental cousins played out before our very eyes in Hoxton.
See Francois and the Atlas Mountain live - ils sont fantastique.
