Stromae: Tiny Desk Concert

Stromae: Tiny Desk Concert with tags npr, npr music, national public radio, live, performance, tiny desk, tiny desk concert, tony desk, tiny concert

Stephen Thompson | December 5, 2022

Belgian dance-pop superstar Stromae puts on one of the best live shows in the world — here’s a two-song set from 2015, presented as evidence — but his stage presentation is tough to strip down. To say nothing of the light show, Stromae’s throbbingly impeccable arrangements involve the extensive use of pre-recorded tracks, all of which are frowned upon at the Tiny Desk. So, given a simple three-word assignment (“no preset sounds”), his team set about re-creating Stromae’s music so that it could be performed in real time.

This involved more gleaming tech than we could have ever imagined when we launched Tiny Desk concerts nearly 15 years ago — veritable banks of laptops, mixers and synthesizers, with multiple producers working out of frame — but damned if every sound in this set wasn’t crafted and played live on the spot. Stromae and his team had to come a day early for hours of setup and rehearsals, and even the band’s clothing was handpicked from the singer’s fashion line, but what they produced felt loose-limbed and organic in the spirit of the series.

It helps that, as heard on this year’s outstanding Multitude, Stromae’s songs draw from a deep well of lived emotion. Backed by three members of the Bulgarian women’s choir Yasna Voices, Stromae kicked off his set with “L’enfer,” a wrenching acknowledgement of suicidal thoughts. The song’s chorus, translated to English, reads, “Sometimes I’ve had suicidal thoughts and I’m not proud of it / Sometimes you feel it’d be the only way to silence them / All these thoughts putting me through hell.”

From there, Stromae’s song selections conveyed lighter moods, but even his most danceable tracks contain undercurrents of darkness and conflict: “Santé” is a toast to those who can’t celebrate, “Alors on danse” (from 2009’s Cheese) embraces dancing as a way to drown out life’s hardships and “Mon amour” attempts to reassure a lover against a backdrop of infidelity and dysfunction. On its own, each track is a heady cocktail of painstaking craft and hard-won joy. Taken together, they form a portrait of a world-class showman at the height of his powers.

SET LIST

“L’enfer”

“Santé”

“Alors on danse”

“Mon amour”

MUSICIANS

Stromae: vocals

Manoli Avgoustinatos: keyboards, charango, vocals

Yoshi Masuda: keyboard, vocals

Simon LeSaint: drums, vocals

Florian Rossi: keyboard, vocals

Yasna Voices NY Bulgarian Women’s Choir, directed by Vlada Tomova

Mimi Berkova

Larkin Grimm

Vlada Tomova

TINY DESK TEAM

Producer: Bob Boilen

Director/Editor: Maia Stern

Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin

Series Producer: Bobby Carter

Videographers: Joshua Bryant, Maia Stern, Pierre Kattar, Sofia Seidel

Production Assistants: Jill Britton, Alanté Serene

Tiny Desk Team: Suraya Mohamed, Marissa Lorusso, Hazel Cills, Kara Frame, Ashley Pointer, Teresa Xie

VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins

Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann

#stromae #tinydesk #nprmusic