For some reasons, Elijah Wood was DJing before Heloise and the Savoir Faire’s set at Amoeba, well, we shouldn’t be surprised, it’s Hollywood, I thought, plus it wasn’t the first time he was doing this, he even has a cool DJ name, Jamie Starr! He got quite retro-funky-R&B-disco-dance with The Jets among others, and was drinking lots of Perrier… Nevertheless, he wasn’t exactly there for some random reasons as the band has recently signed with his own label, Simian Records!
Heloise (and the Savoir Faire) was quite a colorful and charismatic persona and had an electrifying presence on stage. Actually there was only Heloise and her Mac, then iPhone, so I am not sure who exactly was ‘the Savoir Faire’, but one thing is sure, she seemed to know what she was doing. She came on stage with blonde platine braids, black-charcoal eyes and fake eyelashes, wearing a leopard print leotard and a red glittering shawl over her head. She looks like her own disco ball and she sure knew how to make an entrance, but her powerful voice riding the electro-synth-pop music coming from her MacBook was the first thing I did notice. This woman was a dancing music jukebox by herself, Annie Lennox meets Cindy Lauper, a little bit of Lady Gaga or Madonna (for the unusual outfit), or a blonde variation of Beth Ditto… Actually, another big music name is a huge fan: Blondie’s Deborah Harry is one of the band’s biggest supporters and has even done some vocals on a few tracks of Heloise and the Savoir Faire’s debut album ‘Trash, Rats and Microphones’ in 2008. 
‘I hope you are wearing comfortable shoes’, said Heloise before a song. She obviously was, and Blondie’s approval apart, she was doing a dance show on the small Amoeba stage with a stormy presence, and all kinds of vocal effects over her weird electronic mixed bag of beats: as she said she has created her very own brand of what she calls ‘heart-on-your-sleeve dance music’, which could have been a modern version of Yazoo (remember about them?) revisited by some flashy EDM, funk, disco-rock R&B and rap.
She has been described as an electro-pop pioneer, re-building new sounds out of old (80s) dance-pop tricks with a R&B vibe coming from her power house pipes? How can you do that? She was seeing all this like a aerobic class at times, and even began to lose one of her giant fake eyelashes. But this didn’t stop her a bit, she took her iPhone and played it like a guitar, may be using this sort of app? Anyway it made a big effect on the crowd. She did a very short set, may be just four songs, and ended up with ‘Vibezz’ the single of her last album ‘Diamond Dust’ that she was promoting. ‘That’s was really great!’ Elijah told her after the set, he went back to his DJ thing for a little while with some tribal rhythms, while Heloise was greeting fans and doing some signing… by the way, Elijah Wood still looks like a teenager, and yes he is adoraaaable!!
