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Blogs / Lounge Act / February 2010 / Concert review: Nouvelle Vague in Salt Lake City

Concert review: Nouvelle Vague in Salt Lake City

The gimmick is rather genius.

Take a bossa nova band that deals in hip, low-key cocktail-lounge sounds. Put two saucy women with worthy voices out front. Then cover songs that are already familiar to the masses, but never heard in this particular style.

That's pretty much the Nouvelle Vague formula, but the live experience of seeing the French crew is far more dynamic and rocking than one would be led to believe listening to their light-as-air albums.

Tuesday night at The Urban Lounge, Nouvelle Vague pretty much packed the joint (no easy task in this town), and they performed a slam-bang rapid-fire set of frisky old punk and new wave nuggets.

Nouvelle Vague is basically the French duo of Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux, who fill their albums with a rotating cast of singers, and fill in the touring band with a couple of hired guns. As a result, I can't tell you exactly who the two women were ruling the stage Tuesday, but they were hilarious and entertaining.

One wore a polka-dotted dress and pigtails and took the lead on most songs, while the harmonizing sister on stage was decked in a t-shirt and mini-skirt and kept exclaiming how much she'd had to drink.

The audience was pretty much in the same drunken state, leading to a genuine party vibe that seemed to surprise the musicians on stage. The energy certainly helped on songs like the Buzzcocks' "Ever Fallen in Love," The Clash's "Guns of Brixton" and the Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk to F---."

"So Lonely" (The Police) and "Master and Servant" (Depeche Mode) both worked pretty well in the stripped-down approach, and the swanky ballad take on the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen" was a winner. My favorite tune on the night was probably the country/western approach on Talking Heads' "Road to Nowhere," but the slightly creepy takes on Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead" were close behind.