I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: September 16, 2026] Annie-Claude Deschênes

I am vey rarely ahead of a trend, but I think I found out about Angine de Poitrine about two days before everyone else.  I recall watching the KEXP show and thinking, wow, I want to see these guys.  And then like two days later, they blew up and everyone wanted to see them. The video went up on Feb 6 and by Mar 16, when this show was announced, I knew it would be hard to get a ticket.  Luckily, I scored a ticket (and paid $34, not $300).

Who even knew if they were going to have an opener.  Well, soon enough, the opener was announced as Annie-Claude Deschênes.  When I looked her up, I couldn’t find any music by her, which is weird since she has an album Les Manières de Table that came out in 2024.  And a new(ish) single from 2025.

So just who opens for Angine de Poitrine?  Well, Annie-Claude Deschênes is a performance artist and musician.  I have just learned that she was in a band called Duchess Says who were on the terrific alien8recordings label and put out three albums between 2008 and 2016.  Not sure what Annie-Claude was doing in the meantime, but she certainly hasn’t lost any front woman skills.

When the rumbling noises of her first song started, a man in a waiter outfit (bow tie, cloth, paper receipt) stood on the stage and shone a flashlight around.  Then Annie-Claude came running out and shouted the end of that first song.  The second song, Culinary Security was more dancey, but the music was very old school synth style.  Indeed, the bandcamp summary of her album says

Inspired by the pioneers of electronic music, LES MANIÈRES DE TABLE is as danceable and melodic as it is disquieting and dystopian. The album proposes to set the table differently by deconstructing the social codes of politeness, and draws from a wide range of influences, notably Steve Reich’s minimalism, Kraftwerk’s synthetic textures, Herbie Hancock’s stylistic diversity and experimental cinema’s unconventional approach to narrative.

The lyrics were in English and French and song three, Phones, saw Annie-Claude taking a (prerecorded) reservation.   I should mention that on stage this whole time was a small table and two chairs.  After this song, the waiter, who had been polishing the table, put flowers and several Reserved signs on the table.  Menace Minimale was more dancey and I enjoyed the way Annie-Claude moved in a robotic way to the synth blasts and chord changes.

She pulled two guys from the crowd up to the stage and they sat in the chair.  While Meditations played, the waiter served them little pale green jello-looking desserts.  She put canned whipped cream on them, and then proceeded to spray whipped ream into the open mouths of anyone who wanted any.  I felt that I was a little too far back and didn’t want to push anyone out of the way for a little whipped cream, so instead, I enjoyed watching the folks in front of me ask fir some r adamantly refuse.

She stated that she was going to watching Philadelphia’s table manners and then took the hat off of one of the guys which made me laugh.  Later she sat on his lap.

After playing a song that I can’t find online, she ran into the audience and sang a song that I eventually recognized as Fire by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.  It sounded nothing like his version, but it was super fun nonetheless.

When she introduced the last song, one of her helpers released half a dozen inflated hamburger balloons into the crowd.  And we all enjoyed batting them around as she sang her 2025 single Main de Fer.

At first I thought she was going to be just a weird performance artist, but this spectacle was fantastic.  I loved the whole thing, both musically and visually.  When her set was over someone up front even said, only half-joking, “there’s something coming on after that?”

I need to find more about this woman and hope she gets tagged to come along on another show!

§ single (2025)
∏ Les Manières De Table (2024)

Here’s her set from LPR in NYC the night before.   You can see it is largely the same, but with some differences (a cameraman and no whipped cream).