Caravan Palace, Saturday, February 13th, 2016, At L’Autre Canal, Nancy, France, Reviewed
Last Saturday night was an electroswing night at L’Autre Canal, a small auditorium located in my town, Nancy, in the East of France.
The production had invited Caravan Palace, a French musical formation who had fired the crowd with its gipsy jazzy style.
In line with the Austrian DJ Parov Stelar, Caravan Palace has one of the most unique sounds in all of electronic music. They produce EDM known as electroswing.
Created in the mid 2000s, the French 7-piece band is an energetic and spectacular band with 3 studios albums to its credit since 2008. Their first single “Jolie Coquine” was a European success, mostly because of its e burlesque side . The bandname has been chosen to refer to their gipsy sound combined to a cabaret atmosphere worthy of the late 1920s in Paris.
But Caravan Palace really deserves to be seen on stage!
The band was at L’Autre Canal on Saturday to promote the recent release of their third album called <|°_°|>, stylized as Robot. The album capitalizes on Caravan Palace’s characteristic gramophone filters and nostalgic 1920s-era big beat vibes, and it does it well. For new listeners, it might be a fantastic album. This album reflects the personality of the 7-piece band driven by Zoé Colotis, a talented and dynamic singer. Voluptuous Zoé Colotis wore elegant and sexy black dresses during the show, which did not miss to seduce the male audience.
They gave an intense 2 hours show, chaining titles such as “Lone Digger”, “Comics”, “Midnight”, “Mighty” from <|°_°|>, “Suzy” and “Violent Valse”. This track reminded me of the playlist used during a circus show I’ve attended in 2011 in Paris, called “Psy” and performed by the Quebeckers “7 Doigts de la Main” company.
Caravan Palace is kind of a UFO in the French musical landscape. Their music is almost confidential for most people but the crowd of 1,200 aficionados present in Nancy attented an amazing, luminous, punchy, groovy, scatty and dancing concert.
During the encore at the end of the show, the violinist, the double bassist and the clarinettist exhorted the public to jump to transform the place in a big dancefloor! By that time we were far from the Parisian “Années Folles”, and in the 21st century, just enjoying the festive atmosphere emanating from these funny good musicians. What a surrealist evening!
Caravan Palace will be on tour in 2016 in France, Brussels (Belgium), Barcelona and Madrid (Spain), and they will perform at the Bestival (Isle of Wight – UK) next September.
Their website: http://www.caravanpalace.com/
