PERFORMANCE ANXIETY VOL. III: Sébastien Tellier 12.03.08 | Henry Fonda Theater | Los Angeles, CA review and photos by Noah Barron Briefly imagine for a moment if Prince had a lovechild with Tom Jones, and that progeny grew up to be a stringy-haired, sweaty, bearded homeless man with a penchant for shiny white dinner jackets and scarves. Wait, don't bother imagining, you just conjured up an image of Sébastien Tellier. With an arch persona as opaque as the black old-people eye-exam sunglasses he sports, Tellier's live performance is sort of like when Lisa Simpson gets that serenade from Michael Jackson, except MJ is actually an overgrown, yellow mental patient. It's a bullshit schtick, but oddly comforting. I caught Tellier chugging through most of the material off his new-ish album, boldly (and not undeservingly) titled Sexuality, at the Henry Fonda. His act comes off as a cross between brusque indietronica and uber-earnest lounge music. He vamps and preens, strikes magazine cover poses, licks the microphone, two-hand taps his Gibson Explorer, and, so help me God, rolls around on top of his electric piano like an ingénue. "This next one is about my bisexuality," Tellier tells us, introducing the synth-string heavy "Roche." It's like, just because it's schtick, doesn't mean he doesn't mean it. It's too moody, too heartfelt to be a Har Mar Superstar joke. Many of the songs he works through are so largely instrumental, and so heavily melancholic, that any tongue-in-cheekiness eventually dissolves into something else…just tongue, I guess. I mean, there's no way to do a ten-minute guitar solo and still be kidding, right?
A highlight of the show was his rendition of "Divine," an ode to—what?—gay sex and the Miami Vice lifestyle, I suppose. Tellier croons "They try to find the Milky Way, they love to drink it every day." We're firmly in Lou Reed's "Satellite of Love" territory here. It's sort of like your dad hired a wedding singer and the dude was really competent, but he got really drunk early in the evening and had sex with a not-that-cute bridesmaid and the best man in the bathroom, but still put on a really raucous, crowd-pleasing set. I have no idea what that analogy means, but I'm doing my best here. Album gem "Sexual Sportswear," with its arpeggiated Jan Hammer disco crime vibe, is not played for laughs, and Tellier and his wraparound-shades-wearing backing musicians are deadly serious about taking you on a neon speedboat ride, and they have the chops to back it. That's what makes the show so hard to parse and so tantalizing. It's the same reason Scott Thompson was so devastating in those old "Kids in the Hall" drag sketches. Tellier totally owns this persona. He makes drinking water look raunchy. I don't know if this is what the crowd expected, but they got what they deserved.
At the end of the performance, Tellier somberly folds the microphone down, slowly lowering it like a spent phallus. It's a remarkable gesture. He then strikes a final coverboy pose, removes his glasses, and exits stage right. This is cheesy cheese, but it's delectable French brie, complete with glistening waxy sweat and creamy deliciousness in the middle, meant to be licked off the collarbone of a passed-out bisexual supermodel. Or something. Check out the full set of Sébastien Tellier live show photos.