The closer this gig came I started to worry. I had no idea how someone with a back catalogue as diverse as Yann Tiersen’s would be able to pull off a coherent live show.
Known primarily for his beautiful soundtracks – Amélie and Goobye Lenin, among others – he also releases more traditional albums of song-based solo material. His latest album Infinity, for example, offers a bewilderingly wide appeal with vocal samples in an array of European languages. It’s certainly a diverse portfolio of music that on paper may not be ideally suited to a single live set and one audience.
As if to illustrate his diverse appeal the crowd were suitably eclectic. Just in my immediate gaze alone there is an elderly man, a pierced goth and a very small girl who could be anywhere between eight and thirteen. An odd mix indeed.
When Tiersen and his band take to the stage you can tell they are tight. The music is pleasant enough and this diverse crowd of ages and tastes is clearly enjoying it. But as the show progresses the feeling that everyone there is waiting for something different grows. My point of entry to his work was 2010’s wonderful exploration of grief, Dust Lane, so I am waiting for the sorrow. Some are waiting for the new. Others wait for the bittersweet. His instrumental material gets the best reception, especially the pieces from Amélie, and it’s hard to escape the feeling that the show would work best if he either played only soundtrack material, or only songs. Perhaps ‘Yann Tiersen plays the music from (insert name of film here) at the Royal Albert Hall’, or, ‘Yann Tiersen plays (insert one album here)’ would work better as live events? As it stands, things don’t quite fit together, and it’s hard to lose yourself in the slightly jagged spaces between.
That doesn’t mean it wasn’t enjoyable; it was. There were moments when everything worked, when it felt like everyone in the room had met at that single point. ‘Palestine’ for example, was a real highlight from Yann’s song section of the set; very simple, just the words of that tormented land spelt out over and over again, and everything, the rhythm, the lights (coloured red, white, and green), focused on one powerful idea, its execution, and the man at the centre of it.
For the encore the first two tracks are instrumental. For both, Yann is alone, lit by a single spotlight. First he is on the piano playing a tune of almost unbearable prettiness, and this is followed by him playing the violin as if he wants to saw the thing in half. And it’s only during these final moments that I feel our gathered eardrums can transcend the multitude of our wants and needs, and all the lines we were riding to this place meet at a hushed, single point – a little circle of light where a man is playing his heart out.
by Dominic Blewett
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