Bare Essentials

Les Sans Culottes

Friday night at The Silver Dollar, several bands with female singers took to the stage. The 8 1/2s came on with a statuesque singer backed by a female bassist and amazingly, two Mr. Clean look-a-likes. Their first few songs were klezmer-rock (Count On You, Montenegro) with dark cabaret lyrics. Given her rich, throaty delivery, the singer reminded me of Ben Caplan, except without the voluminous beard. The rest of their set consisted of more short, pop-punk type songs (River). The only turn-off was the ubiquitous guitar solo wankery which is passe in 2013.

Patti Cake was next, fronted by a fantastically coiffured singer in a colourful mu-mu. With two back-up singers and several other players, they played bouncy, quirky indie pop. With songs like Boy Detective, Bananas, and Lindsay Lohan, it was about fun dancing. Kritty Uranowski probably harboured diva yearnings with her grand stage hand gestures on torchy numbers like Covert American and Nobody Loves Me. She needed to dial back her big voice a bit since the sound guy had put too much gain on the vocals.

Head-liners Les Sans Culottes came from Brooklyn. Yet they sang entirely in French. Parisian ex-pats? No. It was obviously all an affectation, especially the faux-accent English explanations about the songs. I would claim ironic hipsterism, but they were well past their twenties. In any case, it was great fun music. Using very simple lyrics (e.g., "Allo, allo, je t'aime, je t'aime") which matched wonderfully their punchy 60s a-go-go music, they got the crowd dancing to Magic Baguette, Telephone Douche (a detachable shower-head), and Laisse Tomber Les Filles.