Gig: Amadou & Mariam / Mélissa Laveaux

Amadou & Mariam / Mélissa Laveaux

Phoenix Concert Theatre. Thursday, June 4, 2009.

One of the great things about living in this town is that there's an inexhaustible stream of new, excitingly unheard bands to check out. The flipside of the coin, though, is that we also get the occasional chance to see the world's best when they pass through. After a glut of small-scale indie shows, it feels nice to be switching gears a bit and going to something on a whole other plane. Mali's Amadou et Mariam utterly blew me away when they played Harbourfront in the summer of 2006, and I promised then that I'd not miss them when they returned our way. So this was absolutely a highly-anticipated gig for me, and not even lingering bleh-ness from a cold could dampen my enthusiasm too much.

Although there was quite a mix of people, definitely an older crowd out for this one, skewing into the "we drove down early and had a nice dinner before" middle-aged demographic. Which makes for less pushy types, although also very willing to stand around and gossip loudly about their neighbours while the opening act was on. That turned out to be Mélissa Laveaux, a young singer-songwriter from Ottawa, playing a solo acoustic set that might have been a case of "wrong place, wrong time". Though I moved up a good chunk through the crowd to try and hear her a little more clearly, the chattering audience really overwhelmed her music. Laveaux turned out to be a very nifty guitar player with a fine voice and an engaging manner on the stage, but it was just all swallowed up. Some numbers, including a beautifully-sung Haitian lullaby, still managed to cut through a bit, but as the set went on, it felt like more people were tuning out. She threw in a few covers (White Stripes, Sam Roberts, Elliot Smith) to try and get people to pay attention, but ultimately, it felt like this was just the wrong situation for her to display her talents.

I moved back a piece and found J. & J. by the soundboard, where we settled in and had a reasonable amount of personal space. Fortunately the crowd was more attentive for the main attraction. The six-piece backing band¹ emerged and launched into a groove before Amadou and Mariam were led on to a roaring welcome. They launched into the title track from their recent Welcome to Mali and basically didn't let up for the next ninety minutes. Drawing largely from their two North American breakthrough albums, it was pretty much "dancer ensemble, chanter ensemble, bouger ensemble" non-stop. Amadou was playing what looked like from our vantage point a solid gold guitar — utterly suited to his million-dollar chops. An utterly hypnotic player, Amadou can veer from mesmerizing circular riffs to fiery leads that never come untethered to the song's grooves. He had a handful of extended guitar showcases (including a stunning rip through "Coulibaly") that were, as the last time I saw them, highlights of the set.

Mariam took centre stage for single "Sabali",² a sweet love song that required no translation as the disco ball suddenly came on at the exact right moment and, at the end, Mariam ran her fingers through Amadou's hair — all of which spoke loudly enough that their subsequent run through English-language track "I Follow You" felt almost redundant. But, tout en tout, pretty amazing stuff. The encore included the incredibly pretty "Je pense à toi" and then flipped into a storm of a tune that was either unfamiliar to me, or just so stripped down (to a two-chord vamp of such ripping simplicity it would put The Fall to shame) that it was rendered unrecognizable. One to remember, and a good unofficial start to the summer when we can all get out of the clubs and see a whole world of excellent music — a lot of it for free to boot.

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¹ Kit drum, percussionist, bass, keyb and two dancers/backup singers.

² Powered on the album by Damon Albarn's oscillating synths, I was slightly surprised to see this one live, but the touring keyboard player — identified only as "Igor" — did a good job.