Chromeo
Chromeo
- With Mayer Hawthorne & the County and Breakbot
- At Sound Academy in Toronto on Tuesday
Time has caught up with Chromeo. The Montreal-via-New York duo's nostalgia for late-seventies/early eighties funk-soul was an anomaly when they released She's in Control in 2004, but their icy drum machines and generous helpings of slap-bass have come around again to dominate mainstream club music.
Dave 1 and P-Thugg's patience – and ceaseless touring – was finally rewarded at their packed midweek gig at Toronto's Sound Academy, where a notably good-looking crowd cheered every throb of catchy robo-soul drawn from their three albums, not to mention their blinding light show, which took full advantage of Sound Academy's club-like layout and ambience.
The copious use of smoke machines didn't hurt, either. Tasteful, they ain't, but when the bass is pumping and a sweaty throng is mobbing the stage, a sense of restraint would only get in the way.
Case in point: Mayer Hawthorne, the R&B crooner from Ann Arbor, Mich., whose opening set was a dream come true for a certain brand of retro-fetishist who believes that soul music died circa 1983. Backed by the County, a whip-smart four-piece band in matching ties and bright red sweaters, Hawthorne did bring most of the goods necessary to rock a crowd. His banter was easy and affable; his music – drawn mostly from his major-label debut, How Do You Do, released last week – was tuneful and cleverly arranged; and the influences he wore on his sleeve were well-chosen, from the Supremes-indebted Your Easy Lovin' Ain't Pleasin' Nothin' (from his indie LP, 2009's A Strange Arrangement) to the band's early Commodores-esque treatment of Love in Motion, a collaboration Hawthorne recorded with French dance producer SebastiAn.
Hawthorne's more original tunes, like his charming new single The Walk, resonated strongly with the crowd, but his too-plain singing style sounded more like Smokey Robinson-lite than the smouldering vibe he seemed to have in his crosshairs. It's telling that Hawthorne and company dropped a chunk of Hall & Oates tune You Make My Dreams Come True into the mix. While it might be wedding DJs' secret weapon for a reason, the eighties soft-rockers' oleaginous influence was outed as the Achilles heel in Hawthorne's sound. Though if you closed your eyes and wished really hard that Hawthorne was a long lost member of the Motown stable, you could be transported by his music all the same.
Chromeo, on the other hand, required no suspension of disbelief. They managed to be both slick and utterly, shamelessly cheesy – no set punctuated with so many vocodered voices and ripping guitar solos can be described otherwise – without tipping the scales toward self-parody.
A mesmerizing figure in his dark glasses and shiny suit, Dave 1 indulged in antics such as following a between-song rendition of the guitar riff from Dire Straits' Money For Nothing by throwing up his arm and making the sign of the devil, while his partner P-Thugg mostly played Teller to Dave 1's bombastic Penn.
Hands flew into the air with orgiastic abandon at the first notes of every song, including cuts from 2010's Business Casual ( Night By Night, featuring a hilarious yet appropriate quote of the guitar solo from The Eagles' soft-rock guilty pleasure One of These Nights) and She's In Control ( Needy Girl), but it was the singles from their 2007 breakthrough disc, Fancy Footwork, that prompted the most breathless reactions.
It's utterly baffling that the addictive riffs of Tenderoni and Bonafied Lovin' (Tough Guys) aren't in heavy rotation on top 40 stations the world over; perhaps that's the next step for the group, perhaps not. Either way, Chromeo's time has arrived, and not a moment too soon.
Special to The Globe and Mail