REVIEW: Two Door Cinema Club @ Olympia 25/11/2010

Two Door Cinema Club is one of these numerous electro pop band for which the press seems to fall in love once in a while. Thurssday night, the band was playing in an almost sold-out Olympia for a totally teenage crowd. Indeed, for the three Northern-Irish lads, it was the third gig of the year in Paris and they have now a quite diverse following. After the Nouveau Casino in February and La Cigale in June, the band was coming back in the mythical and all very solemn venue on the Boulevard des Capucines.


There were two opening bands. Florrie, a young talented London-based songwriter who did pretty well with her band followed by The Teenagers, a genuinely annoying French band who couldn't help but ask for half a dozen teenage girls to come onstage while they were playing their hit single Homecoming. That was perfect to end a Junior High year in a private school out of town but there was nothing surprising nor exciting. That's when a part of the audience literally ran away to the bar, taking advantage of the cold beer rather than of the music.


That's around 9:45 PM that the TDCC came- at last- onstage in front of a cheering and mainly female audience. The band started with Cigarettes In The Theatre and went on with Hand Off My Cash, Monty, and Do You Want It All. The late-comers at the back of the venue couldn't see a thing but they really didn't care and were enjoying every moment of the gig. For some of them, it was some kind of out-of-body experience. And you'd better not be epileptic that night as the lights would even have turned a paparrazzi crazy. Something Good Can Work, the single that we all know in France because it became the flagship tune for a bank was the song of the night and we have to admit that the three guys have fathered a little pop nugget.


Surprisingly, the band seemed to keep the same motivation and pleasure to be on stage. And yet, I couldn't help but to find some boringly, binary, bubblegum, puppet-ish side to them There was not a hint of rebellion, not a scream from the guitars that would cover the screams of the girls. Clean but charmless.


After almost a year on tour, the TDCC have acquired a scenic maturity. They will now have to reach the same songwriting maturity to become more than Band Of The Year 2010.