Parisist paid the Inrocks Festival a visit at La Cigale last night to check out Keny Arkana, Giant Drag, CirKus feat. Neneh Cherry, and Lily Allen. Due to chronic late-ness, we missed Keny Arkana, who has received high praise [fr] from Inrockuptibles magazine for her latest album, Entre Ciment et Belle Etoile.

Alas, next up was Giant Drag, whose ironic name, ironically does them justice. The Los Angeles duo composed of Annie Hardy (vocals, guitar) and Micah Calabrese (drums, synth) had the kind of dynamic on stage that you would expect from two friends that, on a drunken lonely night on tour, have sex and then regret it A LOT the next day. Pretty cold and awkward, yes. In addition, Ms. Hardy's cutesy baby voice and repetitive power chords really started irritating us after about two minutes. While anal hymen jokes can indeed be funny, Ms. Hardy shouldn't expect her French audience to get it and then complain "America would have laughed at that." Sure, song titles like "Your Dick Sux" and "You Fuck Like My Dad" are clever and hip -- for two seconds. Female-led bands like Giant Drag make Parisist long for the days of Riot Grrrl.

While anticipating CirKus and Neneh Cherry, a good looking blonde woman made her way singing through the floor of La Cigale. Wearing black stirrup pants, a loose black t-shirt and some kind of white diaper, body, overalls ensemble she was singing to some electro tracks. Perhaps Parisist is outing itself as totally ignorant by not knowing who the hell she was and what the hell she was doing there writhing on stage. One thing that Parisist does know is that she looked and acted like she'd just snorted a generous helping of blow.

After another twenty minute wait the curtains open and all of CirKus is on stage. We danced and cheered through the whole set. Their professionalism and excellent performance was a joy to watch (especially after power chord-Annie). Parisist was particularly delighted to hear the group dedicate "You're Such An..." to George W. Bush as well as give a shout out to Nancy Pelosi, "the first female speaker of the...whatever it is!" (House, Karmil Burt, House.)

A swift fifteen minutes later Lily Allen appears with her 8 piece band. They open with "LDN," Ms. Allen bouncing about on the stage in her poufy white dress and sneaks. The three brass boys sway cutely back and fourth with every song. The performance is tight and well rehearsed, except when Ms. Allen drops the microphone. ("Fuck!") She's smoking and drinking and having an ok time. However her mood appears to drop when she performs "Friend of Mine" and once the song is over she wipes at her nose, then takes a towel to dry her face (which was not sweaty.) It is no surprise that writing an album about a break up and being something of a brat may make some enemies once in a while. In any case, Lily Allen is Parisist's favorite bratty 21 year old British pop star at the moment. The mood certainly changed for the better at "Smile" with the audience singing along and hopping around so hard it was making the floors shake. We can always forgive the adorable troublemakers when they make us dance!

UPDATE: I am wrong. Thanks, Karmil! You are excellent!

Photo thanks to THEFunkyMan who has added his pics to the Parisist Flickr photo pool.