Piano Magic

Although quite small, Nouveau Casino is one of those venues whose lineup is always worth keeping an eye on. Located in an area with little appeal to those unfamiliar with the city, it's nonetheless one of the liveliest and most authentic in terms of nightlife. Its concert calendar reflects the nature of the neighbourhood it's in: the new sensations of the underground scene come to play here, small wonders, well-kept little secrets. A few days ago it was Tarwater and Ricardo Villalobos, today it's Piano Magic on stage, and soon it will be Animal Collective and a Tiefschwarz dj-set.

First of all, let's dispel a myth. Much to our surprise, as soon as the band takes the stage, we discover that the cover of “Disaffected” doesn't depict Glen Johnson (a bearded, cuddly-looking fellow dressed entirely in black), but keyboardist Cedric Pin. It takes the whole of “You Can Hear The Room” to recover from the shock. The lovely opener of the latest album also makes for a great start live, even if not everything is quite dialled in yet. The bass is a touch too loud, the vocals decidedly buried beneath the other instruments, barely audible. The imbalances, however, are already ironed out by “The Nostalgist”, which cradles and wraps you in its melancholy weave. Doing all the work tonight are five musicians: alongside Johnson and the aforementioned Pin, there's Franck Alba on guitar, Jerome Tcherneyan on drums and Alasdair Steer on bass. Unpleasant surprise, though a predictable one: sweet Angèle David-Guillou is absent, so we won't be hearing any of the songs featuring her vocals. Shame.

Another surprise: you'd expect him to be shy and introverted, but on stage Glen Johnson is quite the chatterbox. He dedicates the third song to “anyone here who's just died, right now”. It's “Your Ghost”, a spectral ballad that perhaps suffers a little from Johnson's voice being less deep than on the album original, but it's once again evocative, dark, unsettling. Then “the party starts now”, good old Glen warns us. Indeed, the music turns decidedly more rock, with guitars dominating the scene, creating a powerful wall of sound at certain points in “Jacknifed”, the European bonus track from “Disaffected”. While the others tune their instruments, Johnson explains: “Even though it's depressing, we're still a band. If you're interested, we do weddings, funerals… Just a few days ago we played as a wedding gift”.

“When I'm Done, This Night Will Fear Me”, from “The Troubled Sleep Of Piano Magic”, is the first step into the past, in a set focused almost exclusively on the last two records. Delicate arpeggios form a sonic carpet you happily sink into. More driving (and rounded off with a great finale) is the following “Speed The Road, Rush The Lights”, dedicated precisely to Angèle. Guitars are again at the centre of “The End Of A Long Tired Year”, which also benefits from some clever keyboard touches. Overall, though, tonight Piano Magic sacrifice some of their trademark atmospheres in favour of a more muscular performance, carried above all by the bass and Alba's Fender.

The introduction to the next song says it all: “All we need is love… And music!”. Here comes “Love & Music”, one of the most captivating moments on “Disaffected”, and of the whole evening. Its pop clarity and its distinctive synth riff fill the air. There's no time to catch your breath, though: “Love & Music” melts into “Escape”, an instrumental that's first powerful and relentless, then delicate, then building to a great finale. There's the epic swagger of Mogwai and Godspeed here.

We're already heading towards the end of a set that isn't particularly long, with two tracks of tremendous impact. The first is “(Music Won't Save You From Anything But) Silence”, the song that opened “Writers Without Homes”. Lovely, especially the climax that culminates in the whole band handclapping around the drummer, before the track eases towards its natural conclusion.

There follows a long, amusing rant against encores. Johnson explains that he hates them, and can't stand the ritual that always follows the same script. The band disappears, the crowd claps and makes noise, the band comes back on stage. It's all fake, far too codified, pointless. It's something he simply doesn't get. “Why do they have to go backstage and then come back?” he asks, and tries to give an answer by touching and pointing at his own nose in a very, very telling gesture. Then he corrects himself a little, smiling: “Well, some of them, not all”. The final offering of an evening that therefore has no encore is a lengthy “Password”, from “Artists' Rifles”, with an evocative instrumental coda in which a wall of feedback reigns supreme, with Alba hunched over his guitar and his (enormous) pedalboard.

Tonight, without a doubt, the magic of the piano was the magic of the guitar…

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