St George’s Church foresaw a special night, but it was Concorde 2 that received the bossa nova group, Nouvelle Vague. Despite being considerably less spacious and comfortable than the venue that was first promised, the gathering crowd was presented with a brilliant performance.
The supporting band for the night was Joan, composed of a strong female lead vocalist and her two musicians. Their task of warming up the crowd was not successfully achieved, but the temperature rose as soon as Nouvelle Vague stepped on stage.
The lovely Mélanie Pain, joined by the sensual Nadeah Miranda sang to the thirsty fans a few of their version of the classics, such as “Dancing with Myself”, “Ever Fallen in Love” and “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”. Energetic and funny, the band entertained for one hour and a half. They introduced a few songs of their latest album “Couleurs sur Paris”, which is about to be released in the UK. Even if there were issues with language barriers, the French songs did not stop the band and fans to engage in a rather magical atmosphere.
Even though “Ça Plane Pour Moi”, an upbeat song from their album “3” was left out of the set list (which saddened a few people in the room), “Putain, Putain” was an entertaining substitute, a song which talks about, as Mélanie explained, how ‘lucky’ we are being European.“God save the Queen”, “Too Drunk to Fuck” and “Friday Night, Saturday Morning” (song with which they put a terminus to the night) were huge crowd pleasers, not only because of how much singing along there was, but also due to Nadeah’s rather sexy-tending-to-erotic performance.
Twice throughout the performance Nadeah came off stage to join the dancing fans on the floor. Nadeah mentioned Brighton as a very spiritual town and had the room making fly-like noises as to introduce another 80s hit “Human Fly”. The crowd fought for an encore. They screamed, clapped and stomped their feet for a few minutes and Nouvelle Vague gave them a four-song and well-awaited encore. Mélanie’s charm and Nadeah craziness merged amazingly on stage and their rapport throughout the performance did not let fans down, judging by their smiling faces as they left the venue. “Couleurs sur Paris” will be released in the UK on the 16 November 2010.
