It must be exciting living like Bobo Boutin, Poney P, and Mingo L’Indien. In the daytime, they pass through cities incognito as seemingly level headed Canucks only to emerge as their true indie pop maniac superstar selves late at night. It is as these impulsive creatures which the audience witnesses taking drum sets, keyboards, guitars, and their very microphones hostage while our souls hang in the balance. This is the daring unpredictable world of Les Georges Leningrad, Quebec’s energetic trio who threatens to take a solitary song and spit it into many songs veering into limitless directions all at once.
In Bobo Boutin’s own words, the glasses wearing-pool playing and seemingly very soft spoken man with the faux-fur coonskin hat was the “Pre-Transformation” Bobo. He could have easily been overlooked even while setting up gear as just the kind of person flannels and fleece were made for. Yet, on stage Bobo appeared and played in a way that made you doubt whether he was actually even the same person as before. The transformation of watching Bobo clad in his Zorro like mask and with sharpie pen marks as his shirt was so complete it was as if he were an indie rock version of Superman. (Surely, a comic strip about this band would be much more entertaining than Superman.) Anything but subtle, he drummed at times like he was running an Olympic marathon. Poney P., on the other hand, discarded her own faux fur hat for a black wig and a high contrast polka dot dress. She sang with a sometimes spooky and other times frantic quality while dancing and even crawling on the stage. Mingo, who was definitely the most subtle of the three, chose to hide in the darkness wearing a ski mask like a burglar.
Les Georges Leningrad would perhaps be the perfect band to see on Halloween. Their songs are slightly schizophrenic and so fast at times like all of the plots and ideas of a full-length film being crammed into a three-minute short. This quirky brand of electropop makes you forget what sleep even is as if the blood pounding through your veins has been replaced with coffee. I’ve never seen so much dancing from the audience at the Empty Bottle. The floors literally shook with the dancing feet. When it was all over, and the movement caught up so that you could begin thinking rationally again, you couldn’t help but wonder…what in the world just happened?
View the complete photoset, which also includes pre-Transformation pics
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