Christine & The Queens @ Royal Festival Hall...

Last night Stuart and I went to the final night of the Meltdown festival to see / listen / marvel at Christine & The Queens at the Royal Festival Hall on London's glitzy South Bank.

 

Wow! Just wow!

 

Christine & The Queens (aka Chris aka Héloïse Adélaïde Letissier) had gone a little bit under my radar thus far. Sure, I'd liked their single Tilted from 8 years ago or so.  And we'd even intended to watch their performance at Glastonbury when we were there a few years back but got side tracked. But boy have we been missing out.

 

Last night's show was simply stunning. Euphoric dancing, sublime singing, it was a non-stop joyous two-hour performance. It was a concept too. A rock opera of sorts based on their most recent album 'Paranoia Angels True Love' which itself is based upon Tony Kushner’s 1991 magnum opus Angels in America.

 

Sure enough the performance, much like the album and the play, was performed in three acts. Each containing a series of beautiful, weird, eclectic, and enthralling songs. Accompanied by dancing and movement, the songs were interspersed with heavily echoed scripted dialog about pride, and power, and angels, and death, and love, and life.

 

In much the same way that Kushner’s hero Prior Walter, a young man dying with Aids in late-80s New York, is visited by angels and has a series of visions and prophetic dreams, so did Chris.

 

Chris cavorted with statues and staircases and chairs, writhed about on stage, and danced in a sometimes smooth sometimes thrusting style - their physicality on full display. They were ripped, muscular, and topless throughout. It was thrilling to watch.

 

With aid from the lighting, thumbing bass, synthesizers, and melodic harmonies we were all utterly hypnotised, Hypnotised and transported - far up above the auditorium to higher planes of being. As Chris communed with the shining lights from above the stage, we too were drawn to them. Mesmerised, we couldn't look away.  

 

It was all so beautifully done.

 

The final act saw Chris singing in a gorgeous falsetto, putting on a red baroque-era skirt, with a black blazer, and white angel wings. They looked stunning.

 

Then from kneeing they shed their clothes once again stripping back to just their trousers, commanding the stage facing the audience one final time for the last song of the night - the love-drenched synth-pop ballad Big Eye. It has the sold-out crowd on their feet.

 

As the final bars drifted away the crowd went wild. But Chris was gone. Ascended perhaps. But we were left stunned and euphoric looking at an empty stage. Bravo. What a show.