I hadn’t planned on going to Paris last weekend. I had seen a while back that Alela Diane and Kevin Morby were playing Paris one day after the other during my summer holiday but a trip to Paris in summer was surely going to be too hot and too expensive.
And yet as the time drew nearer I felt like it would be more wrong not to go, especially considering these were two of my favourites who’d both released brilliant new albums this year and neither artist were playing Scotland on this tour schedule. The heat looked to be dipping a little back under thirty degrees on the weather forecast (in the end it was stifling) and I got some extra money for work I did in June. So off I went.
Alela’s concert was part of the Days Off festival at the Philharmonie de Paris, which was slightly out of the city centre in a big modern venue designed for use by symphony orchestras, and also including exhibition spaces dedicated to the history of music. Getting there was pretty easy on the Metro, with the stop right across the road from the venue. The venue advertised air conditioning on its website but unfortunately when I arrived it was hot as hell. The staff were lovely though and it had a nice little courtyard with other bars dotted around too. I had been doing other tourist stuff so sadly didn’t get a chance to look at the exhibitions or bookshop both of which looked interesting.
Alela was playing in the venue Salle des Concerts which had a capacity of about 1500 with a mix of mainly standing with some balcony seats. While it filled up nicely later, when I arrived you could easily get to the front of the stage and there was no barrier at all. I liked how the French crowd sat down on the floor waiting on the show – surely a sign of a clean venue! The crowd were a nice mix of older fans and people my age – everyone looked very chic as well considering the heat.
Supporting Alela at the show was Flora Hibberd who I initially thought was French because, even though she sang in English, she spoke what sounded like fluent French to the crowd. Turned out she was English but had lived in Paris for a while. Her music had a mix of indie folk influences with some of her older songs like ‘Remote Becoming Holy’ sounding a little like Big Thief, and newer ones were a little more poppy with synths like ‘Ache’ from her upcoming album ‘Mammoth’. I really enjoyed the set overall, despite not knowing any of her music beforehand.
Alela came on stage, with a full band including guest Peter Broderick, and greeted the crowd with a ‘bonsoir’ before saying how happy she was to be back in Paris. Really what was so spectacular about the show was how great her voice sounded all evening. Alela opened her set playing songs from her beautiful new album ‘Who’s Keeping Time?’ including highlights ‘Dusty Roses’, ‘California’ and ‘Wide Open Spaces’ which she dedicated to her brother. My favourite is ‘In My Own Time’ and it sounded wonderful in the perfect acoustics of the venue.
Before she went on this tour, I saw Alela had asked on Instagram about whether or not she still had to play ‘The Pirate’s Gospel’, the song which brought her success in France with her first album. It seemed from that question alone that she had somewhat moved on from the song and wished she could ditch it. The response was overwhelmingly in favour of her still singing it though and so she duly gave her fans what they wanted. Thematically and stylistically it did stand out amongst her other songs which deal more with personal emotions, motherhood and relationships and yet…it was a huge amount of fun live. The song felt like a moment where she got to loosen up and the audience loved singing and clapping along. You just can’t argue with a joyful response like that.
What I also loved about the evening was how she asked for audience requests and even did an impromptu Q&A session where the first response to ‘any questions’ was a hilarious ‘will you marry me?’. Alela seemed to particularly enjoy playing songs from that first album solo acoustic including ‘Oh! My Mama’ and then in the encore she played ‘Tired Feet’ and dedicated it to the city where she wrote it, after visiting Notre Dame cathedral. When she sang ‘although I’ve never been here / I know that here I’ve swam before‘ she really made it seem like she had been French in another life.
My favourite song from her Cusp album ‘Ether & Wood’ was another highlight of the set for me, alongside the final song of the encore, which was a swoony version of ‘Of Love.’
Part of why I was intrigued to attend Alela’s show in Paris was because she has a much bigger audience there than even back home in the US. I mean she does look at little French but surely that alone isn’t enough to explain why her audiences are three times bigger there? From what I could deduce from the concert it seems like the French just have damn good taste (I got the same vibe with the slightly younger Kevin Morby crowd the next evening).
Alela is naturally stylish and elegant, both in her music and her looks, which seems to be rightly appreciated by the French. It was lovely to see such a big crowd, who listened attentively, loved every song and gave a female indie folk artist the adoration that they deserve.
I came away thinking the mystery isn’t why the French love Alela, it’s why she doesn’t have bigger audiences in the US and the UK.
Highway Queens 
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