Christine and the Queens [Jasa Muller]

“… AND I saw people going to the rest rooms. Don’t do that, pee on yourselves! And if you piss me off again, I’ll be even longer,” thus Christine and the Queens’ frontman playfully berated a restless but devoted audience at the band’s Meltdown Festival set at Royal Festival Hall on June 17.

A lighthearted jibe, but the words encapsulated the evening’s events – the set more a theatre-dance piece than a gig, and very much a ritual for Chris, as he repeatedly reminded us while summoning the Lords of Music to take him to another realm; the reference to taking even longer, an acknowledgment that this work of art laying out their latest album Paranoïa, Angels, True Love in three acts while exalting the angels was a transformative piece that would take as long as it took, and the nod to the crowd a gentle rebuke to the countless people who walked in and out of the seated event during the performance.

There was nothing to indicate that the audience was unhappy, quite the contrary, there was rapturous applause and approval as the astonishing sound, light and dance performance – in the case of the piercing strobe lights, at times, quite literally – assaulted the senses.

But it had been a long, hot day and perhaps the unsettled viewers had just drunk too much – a shame as it cracked the immersive effect of the performance.

Opening with Tears Can Be So Soft – a beautiful trip-hoppy lament – the stage strewn with scattered sculptures; Chris took the audience through a path of anguish, agony, suffering, exploration, love and loss running through the album’s drum and synth-heavy tracks, some wistful, others jarring, as smoke, lasers, light projections and celestial voices elevated the performance to an unearthly realm over the course of over two hours.

Starting out in a waistcoat and trousers, Chris soon discarded the top, allowing the light to highlight the detail in the dancer’s skilful movement as he moved from the dreamy A Day In The Water to the delicate string intro to Full of Life, the lyrics to which contrast deliciously with Johann Pachelbell’s rising Canon D violin sample.

Much of the performance is broken up with opaque monologues exploring divinity, transformation, grief and other themes preoccupying Chris more recently, the influences from Tony Kushner’s play Angels In America, from which he took inspiration for the album, are apparent throughout.

Physically, he took a matador’s attitude, the proud stance emphasising the masculinity of the first act. Later, when he dons a shimmering red skirt, this masculine physicality melts away and a coquettish persona emerges as he interacts with his guitarist in silent dialogue.

“This is going to get more dramatic than I anticipated,” he says at one point, as if it was possible – and it was.

As the performance begins to draw to a close, a band member solemnly cloaks Chris in a suit jacket and angel wings, the lines between this world and the next further blurred.

And as the wings come off, there is no conclusion, you get the sense that the artist has a long way to go before finding resolution, redemption, absolution or whatever he is seeking – and the music will no doubt continue to evolve for some time.