Seven years after its last Bell Center, Stromae returned there yesterday to offer the first of five concerts in Quebec on its calendar. Renewed experience that this Multitude tour, completely different from that of Square root in 2015: the Belgian plays the card of nuance this time, putting himself in tune with the bittersweet songs streaked with African and Afro-Latin rhythms from his recent album, and places his repertoire in a refined and calculated scenography right down to the choice uniforms – which everyone wore, from the four accompanying musicians to the sound engineers and lighting technicians planted behind their consoles, at the back of the floor.
At 9 p.m. sharp, in a Bell Center filled to the ceiling with fans, the screen lit up to present a short animated film. Stromae, imagined in the manner of Pixar, in a lab designing his next tour, surrounded by his robots which interact with him as those of Tony Stark did in the Iron Man films, that is to say as s they had a personality of their own.
The idea is very simple, but it changes our perception of the show before our eyes. The main element of the decor is a vast luminous screen – or, rather, ten screens attached to as many of these robotic arms, which make the images move in space, and therefore sometimes let us see behind the scenes, an effect particularly successful during the poignant When it is ?. Except that after having seen the short opening film, these robots are no longer simply stage props, but many characters playing a role in Stromae’s theatre, which will push the interplay between the natural and the artificial up to call a robot dog on stage to bring him the jacket he will put on before singing Papaoutai.
This contrast between electronics and acoustics, between tradition and science fiction, is the axis around which the album revolves. Multitude, assemblies of folk musical references (African, Latin, East-European, Asian) and modern electronic rhythms. During the tour Square root, Stromae offered an almost athletic performance, pushing his voice and his gestures to the maximum to subdue the energetic electronic dance music; the songs of Multitude lending itself to a more nuanced interpretation, Stromae sounding almost phlegmatic on stage, especially during the less rhythmic passages.
Nothing to envy to New York
He kicked off the evening with a rhythmically raised trio, Unbeaten and sons of joybefore revisiting All The same (from the album Square root, 2013), warmly applauded, this one. ” What a welcome ! In New York, frankly, they weren’t making as much noise,” rejoiced Stromae, who twice filled Madison Square Garden, a feat for a French-speaking musician.
Until then, unsurprisingly, the interpretations of these first songs seem identical to those engraved on disc. In front of the battalion of robot screens, its four musicians in front of what looked like consoles, lined up straight from the courtyard to the garden, like Kraftwerk presented themselves on stage. The tone suddenly got softer with the rumba My love ; three of the four musicians, who we thought were busy playing the synths, then grabbed the guitars, the last one remaining seated behind his small counter, keeping the rhythm on an electronic drum kit.
During loneliness, we saw two Belgian flags flying on the floor. In the middle of the show, another famous scenographic artifice: offering the double Bad day and Have a good day, an armchair was placed in the middle of the stage, into which Stromae crashed. Rising painfully to move towards the floor, he followed him, initiating a choreography between the singer and his armchair – what a beautiful scene!
The second half of the show proved to be more invigorating, starting with this breathtaking version of Papaoutai, first very faithful to the original, then incorporating African percussion. In contrast, Your partyanother success of Square root, was definitely more techno and tribal, emphasizing even more the dark character of the text. When he revisited his old successes, Stromae and his accompanists managed to inject them with the sounds of Multitudewithout distorting them.
So, yes, we danced (he saved it for the encore, that one), but not all the time. Even most of the time, lulled by flowing rhythms, we watched him, Stromae, play comedy as much as sing, inhabiting his ingenious decor with his songs which, yesterday, made us think more than they invited us to stretch our legs. Stromae is doing it again tonight and tomorrow at the Bell Center, where he will return again on December 14, after a visit to the Videotron Center in Quebec City on the 11th.