Phoenix/James Yuill Live @ The iTunes Festival 30/07/2010
The ITunes Festival 2010 edition came to an end last weekend, after a full month of showcasing an impressively eclectic line up of first class talent coming from all corners of the popular music spectrum.
Held at the iconic Roundhouse in Camden, this year’s event has seen top-notch performances from the likes of Scissor Sisters, Tony Bennett, Florence & The Machine and The National to name a few. Last Friday, was the turn of uberhip French combo Phoenix, supported by homegrown indie electronica maverick James Yuill.
The laptop wizard opened the evening with an assured set of his playful tunes. One of the artists originally thrown into the bag of the infamous ‘folktronica’ genre – which years ago was allocated to anyone who managed to produce any combination between electronic and acoustic elements – James Yuill keeps his consolidation as a fine example of British indie electropop. Plugging his second album ‘Movement In A Storm’, his set was backed by an as excellent as colourful visual work and it finished on an improvised note, when the software on his laptop crashed, needing to resort just to his acoustic guitar for the last song. It all worked for the best, giving further proof of what a confident performer he is.
Following Yuill’s feel-good vibes; Phoenix came onstage after experiencing some soundcheck delays which only helped building the devoted audience’s expectations up. Their set began with ‘Lizstomania’ and finished on a encore with ‘1901’ – the two standout tracks from of their recent and unanimously acclaimed album ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’- the full album tracklist was played in between, spiked with (very) few of their most memorable older classics.
The band from Versailles sounded compact and seemed to be noticeably enjoying a show that was rapturously received by their trendy fans. Singer Thomas Mars even left the stage at the end, generating some celebrated crowd immersion moments.
