Cabaret duo turn rock band. Well, they were bored. But does it work? Course it does, babes.
Freed from the restriction of an extravagant story and backed by a nameless session musician guitarist and a work experience drummer, Bourgeois & Maurice focus on being hapless rock stars. Decadently bedecked in black they deliver the songs and devilish laughs we love through the characters we adore, with extra drumbeats and axe action.
Black Rope, Celebrity and Retro are easily beefed up rock style, whilst the Lizard Men goes for Spinal Tap insanity. Ritalin gets Maurice on live glock and a jump-up-and-down chorus. Of their brilliant new songs (the album of which we are eagerly awaiting - hence these titles may not be right) Tax Me is dead sexy and hilarious and Emotionally Distant rings all our neuroses bells and turns into a clap along anthem for the emotionally challenged. The fracking awesome Double Standards song (replete with Georgeois' dance interpretation) tickles the edge of our comfort zone right up to the end and Your Boyfriend Is A Twat has us in stitches.
Most surprising of all is an outing for Forget You (off Musical Couture), sung straight, no mucking about. It's a beautiful, sad love song and gets rapturous audience approval although Georgeois is not entirely comfortable being quite that raw with no savage or outrageous lines to whip out at the last minute. Get used to it, babes. We love it.
Georgeios' eyelashes seem more like feathers each time we see him and his extraordinarily lithe form puts a Jaggeresque sneer to good use, although he's definitely too taken with his studded baseball cap for any true rock goddery. Maurice Maurice's beehive's had a sculpted tidy and encased in proper dark, extravagant shades (cant see a thing) she strikes a PJ Harveyesque shape. Until she speaks. Or gets aroused by the self-assessment tax deadline.
Georgeois's voice is as astonishing as ever, rich and beguiling (how does a skinny boy get such deep notes?) and Maurice ventures out from behind the piano more often these days, once with a keytar, generally with a can of lager in hand, loping on what must be killer heels but we were too far back to get a good look at her feet.
Add a fake rock encore (genuinely sought by an adoring audience) and you've a downright awesome night with the Bourgeois and Maurice band. Judging by how packed it was Downstairs at Soho Theatre on Saturday (great cabaret set-up but wiggle room only) you will surely have another chance to see them flouting the 'same attitude, more instruments'.
Let them break your heart, kick you in the teeth, make you hoot, weep and want to be their friend.
Here's how we fell in love with B&M: Interview, Shedding Skin, Can't Dance
Visit Bourgeois and Maurice online for more madness.
