SUMMER SERENADE
Woodkid brings his compelling baroque folk-pop sound to an appreciative crowd at Place des Festivals.
“Widescreen” is the obvious point and first principle behind the Montreal International Jazz Festival’s free outdoor Grand Événements, and there are two possible approaches: have an IMAX-sized personality, or a cinemascopic sound/show. Woodkid is mostly the latter.
A connection with the spirit of the city doesn’t hurt. French sensation Woodkid, a.k.a. Yoanne Lemoine had pre-seduced a largely francophone Montreal audience with his baroque folk-pop and dramarama visuals in Métropolis last year, after racking up 70 bazillion Youtube viewings of his Iron video. In conversation last week, he was intelligent, relaxed, confident, sly and dryly selfdeprecating.
So, French. And as he took the stage shortly after 9:30 p.m. to the boat horn trombone and tuba intro, you knew that, despite this not being jazz and it being Concept and Woodkid being in the early days of a three-year-old career, there would be no barrier, linguistic or musical. This wasn’t going to be a problem.
Cello and standup bass swept in over swirling keyboards, pummeling drums were detonated and the sound dropped into dramatic piano and Woodkid took the mic for Baltimore’s Fireflies. A forest bloomed darkly on the rear projection screen. The singer’s imperfect but curiously compelling voice meshed for an impressively seductive opening. And then the singer raised his hands to his capped head and just beamed at the crowd.
“Bonsoir Montreal!” he said before declaring it an honour to be here. “Est-ceque vous êtes prêt?”
They were. Through the gentle horns and strings of Childhood The Golden Age Woodkid stood backlit and in shadow, putting the accent on everything swelling around him, before striding through a laneway of lights to jump at the lip of the stage as the drums of The Golden Age (is over) leaped themselves.
Montrealers being Montrealers, the habitual crowd of 100,000+ (neither the Jazzfest nor the police give out crowd counts readily anymore) was out on the Place des Festivals on Jeanne Mance St. to seren- ade the summer kickoff of the Bell Opening Event, the sounds, the sights, and to be Seen and just Be.
People like Elie Babin, 19, originally from France but now living here and studying photography at Concordia. He was here for the Fest and the vibe, but also for the headliner.
“Yes, I like his stuff a lot — especially Run Boy Run and Iron. I like the rhythm, but I also like that it’s a good synthesis of aural and visual.” What else did he like musically? “Mostly old stuff,” he said a little sheepishly. “Stones, Beatles, Supertramp.”
So — a true Montrealer. Asked if he thought Woodkid was unique, he thought long and hard. “I don’t know if I would say it’s unique, but I don’t see a lot like it around.”
The weather, after last year’s rainy moments, was sublime. The lucky streak was back on. It was Woodkid onstage, but the Jazzfest is in the prime of adulthood at 35 and counting. A larger, redesigned TD mainstage with supersharp videos creens testified to that. With Woodkid delivering the first of four free outdoor blowouts that will include jazz classicism (Diana Krall), ballsy old-school Rock’n’R&B (Vintage Trouble) and alternahop (Deltron 3030), you could feel the sophisticated sense of audience consolidation that drove the plan.
Onstage, Where I Live sounded like an unlikely and almost mournful fusion of Pat Watson and Morrissey. In truth, things had gotten little samey by 10:15 when Woodkid kicked in the back-line marching drums and his own stage presence up a notch. Hooded drummers announced Conquest of Spaces, and that we were heading into the dance section. You could feel this show building carefully, using all of its many moving parts, deftly deploying the strings and horns without crowding anything, to create an emotionally satisfying whole. The remarkable visuals, horns and pulse of Iron propelled the latter half of the show toward his other massive hit, the encore Run Boy Run, with the animated singer leading the entire audience in mad leaping from the stage walkway in a shudderingly rhythmic climax. He was making good on an earlier message to the crowd: I Love You. Would he kid you?