I don’t know that I’d listen to them at home.
#Williams encore electric keyboard full#
Their intentionally over-the-top, danceable pop was full of hammy theatrics and choruses, and a collective laissez-faire attitude prioritizing fun without sidelining artistic merit. That made them a perfect fit for a cool summer evening at FME. The love child of musicians from Canailles, Ponctuation and LUMIÈRE, the best way to describe Bon Enfant is that they deliver peak-music-festival-music with a Québécois twist. There’s nothing minimal about these guys, despite their weapons of choice. That they’ve combined Afrobeat, dance-punk and Claypool-esque yelps and chants into a fun, entertaining and engaging performance model speaks to the unlikely strangeness of their appeal. If so much as one bum note took these guys apart on stage, it would cause discordant chaos.
Between their individually deft rhythmic timing and obvious affinity for weaving in and out of complex time signatures as a group activity, “Dance Band” feels like a wink-nudge. This Amsterdam four-piece consists of a drummer, a percussionist, a keyboard player/vocalist and a bassist. And with that in mind, Larose carried himself more confidently than he sounded. Being the first act up on the main stage on opening night at FME was surely a daunting task. Larose’s music is solid, and the players are top-notch, but the frontman never quite got over with the same level of intensity as the rest of the band. That’s an unfortunate thing to have to say about a critically acclaimed Quebec artist kicking off a festival that wears love for our province’s success stories on its sleeve.
And the truth is, Thierry Larose’s band was better than his vocal chops on stage on opening night on the main outdoor stage. Here are as many reviews as we could pack in to bring you this year’s FME report. And over the course of an unseasonably warm, sunny holiday weekend, we had a final hurrah as the 2023 summer festival season came to its unofficial conclusion. We went, we danced and we took lots of notes. The Festival de musique émergente (FME) took place from the final day of August through the wee hours of the long weekend with yet another spectacular edition of excitement, discovery, debauchery and all-around enjoyment. As has been the custom for 21 consecutive summers on Labour Day weekend the lakeside city of Rouyn-Noranda, in the Quebec region of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, hosted four days and nights of live music featuring some of the province’s most notable names in the business alongside multiple times as many upcoming talents from chez nous and abroad.
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