It’s worth repeating that the best live concerts are often impressive visually as well as musically. This is certainly the case with the Franco-Finnish trio thedø, who played to a sold out audience at Paris’s La Maroquinerie club last night.
Thedø is actually a duo (Finnish Olivia B Merjlahti and French Dan Lévy), but live they add Jeremie Pontier on drums. The visual effect Pontier adds is mesmerizing. He is devoured by a monstrous metallic chandelier, a cross between a cage and the skeleton of a spaceship, perhaps something one enters to be beamed up. On the aluminium tubes that surround Pontier, hang a curious array of objects, from what appears to be a breastplate of Xena Warrior Princess, to wrenches, cooking pans, and the liberty bell. He played all of these during their set. Indeed, this drum set could, in time, go down as the most spectacular in the history of rock.
There’s something wonderfully incomparable about the live rock shows tradition that permits facial expression tacitly banned in everyday social situations: the beautiful ambiguity of a face that could be the sign of either a cutting appendicitis or a fantastic orgasm. That is certainly the case with lead singer Merjlahti, whose twisted face let loose sweet full notes, sometimes recalling Bjork and Joanna Newsom. She complained of the heat at one point during the show. It’s no wonder since her head was wrapped in what looked like a weasel wreath. She engaged the crowd with playful banter, clearly enjoying every second of her stage time.
Meanwhile sidekick Dan Lévy looked like a Geronimo imitator with his headband and black war paint. In fact, Merjilahti also donned the face paint. It was difficult to see drummer Pontier behind his shimmering silver set.
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