The Irrepressibles / Bourgeois & Maurice

The Queen Elizabeth Hall, part of the Southbank Centre in London, is hosting a St Valentine's Day Massacre tonight. The main event is The Irrepressibles in the auditorium, which is sold out, but there is a full evening of DJ sets and bands in the foyer, as well as cabaret artists including Jonny Woo and Dusty Limits.

Supporting The Irrepressibles in the QE Hall are Bourgeois & Maurice, a flamboyant, slightly twisted cabaret-style duo with Maurice Maurice on the piano and Georgeois Bourgeois on vocals, banter, strange dancing and posing. He sports the biggest pair of false eyelashes ever and has an interesting selection of costumes including a tight, black fringed jumpsuit and lurid pink polka dot outfit.



Their songs are laugh-out-loud funny. One of the numbers is dedicated to a chap in the front row who Bourgeois has been flirting with, complimentary to start with and then bounces into a bitchy chorus about having no personality - "looks can only go so far if you're as deep as Avatar." Another is introduced as a positive message to take away with us – the main advice seems to be "if you don't know what to do with your life, then die." They also poke fun at guest lists and celebrity, and sing a song which "goes out to the kids" – 'Ritalin' – slightly scary, cutting, catchy and highly entertaining.

Now for more serious posing! There's a long interval for the stage to be set up for The Irrepressibles and the première of their 'Mirror Mirror Spectacle'. They staged a similar event at the Victoria and Albert Museum last year – 'The Human Music Box' - which they also took to the Latitude Festival. I just caught the end of their set at Latitude and watched awestruck as they performed from the box which was floating on the festival lake.



The Irrepressibles are a ten piece orchestra led by Jamie McDermott, who is the songwriter and composer, sings lead vocals and plays guitar, as well as being the artistic director for these events. He stands on a central platform screened by gauze, with large mirrors to either side which are framed by stuttering vertical strip lights and intermittently lit by suspended bulbs. The players are arranged in front of each mirror – oboe, clarinet, flute, double bass, keys, marimba and other percussion, cello, violin and viola. The visuals are dramatic – metallic ruffles and heavy make-up abounds with colourful crimped and crested high-rise hair. The players move with the music, striking synchronised static poses or moving fluidly as the music demands. They look like the cast of a gothic Midsummer Night's Dream.

The sounds created are pretty dramatic and powerful too. The set starts gently with heavy breathing in the introduction to 'I'll Maybe Let You' from McDermott, who sings the first few songs from behind the gauze screen. The arrangements are beautiful, the tinkling backing vocals and harmonies are other-worldly and McDermott has a powerful voice, with vibrato and falsetto stylings, which has been described as sounding like 'the ghosts of Billy McKenzie and Jeff Buckley wrestling together.'



When McDermott moves to the front of the stage, we can see more clearly that he's made up like Steve Strange of Visage and that he's an endearing drama queen. This dramatic posing persona slips just a couple of times during the set – when he hits a duff note on the guitar during 'Knife Song' and has to retune and restart the song; and when the auditorium is plunged into darkness and there’s a scream through the PA, but the lights come back up too quickly, just as McDermott is taking a swig from a bottle of water which sort of ruins the tension and everyone laughs.

They perform all of the songs on their recently released debut album 'Mirror Mirror' with lyrics about love, longing and loss. 'Splish! Splash! Sploo!' borrows and twists a couple of lines from 'Can't Help Falling in Love' and the chorus, which gets right inside your brain, is noted as 'wailing' on the album's lyric sheet. They finish the main set with my favourite track from the album, which was also on their EP, 'In This Shirt', a melancholic romantic song.

McDermott responds to the standing ovation at the end of their Valentine's Day show by blowing kisses and the band throws red roses in to the crowd. 'Mirror Mirror' is an enchanting and entrancing spectacle, an audio-visual escape in to a more romantic world, and I hope that people will get an opportunity to see it at some festivals this year.

FUTURE GIGS

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