Whilst Sunday maybe a festival's quietest day, their stages are still as alive as ever. Hidden on the east side of the fields was The Next Stage, new to SGP this year. On which you could have found the french powder-puff mademoiselle, Petite Meller (yes that's her real name) and her extremely talented Afro-French band, enact the most aesthetically pleasing performance that required three outfit changes and looked as if it was extracted from the dreams of Wes Anderson.
For most people, the sexualisation of adolescence or the appropriation of culture are areas of discomfort, however, for this Lolita archetype, who is enamoured with African culture, these are topics which should be so obvious that they are neither damned or damaged nor are they glamorised. And with her degree, and soon to be masters, in philosophy this girl knows her stuff when it comes to repression, Lacanian theory, sexuality, and what we see as literal- something she likes to release when on stage. With this in mind, it becomes clear that her imagery isn't just an artistic stunt, instead she claims that "
bringing the libidinal unconscious dreams into reality is what fascinates" her and for this reason she aims to create realities that are "more real" than the unrepressed ones we have in our consciousness.
Whilst her philosophical passions can be hard to get your head around, her performance of fun electro-pop-eurotrash-inspired French chansons (in English) are easy to get along with and groove down to. Unfortunately for Petite her set happened to be during the Sunday headliner, Air, so the crowd was a petite as she is. The size of the crowd even left one member asking whether fellow gardeners knew what was about to happen and then deciding it was better they weren't there as it left more space to dance. And how the crowd did.
Filling the stage with bizarre instruments of the jazz and electro variety, were her band, dressed in coordinating blue and mustard garments, and looking as cute as hell. Then without a moment to spare Petite greeted the stage with her sugary sweet presence in her first outfit of the night: "a Russian hotel blanket", 70's velvet platforms, and what looked like a safari helmet. With only a few singles out in the mainstream, her setlist wasn't as chunky as her heels, yet she still played her pop-jazz fusion with an unstoppable tenacity (despite a few stumbles and nip slips). And although her set was small it was solid, squeaky gold that called for dancing that seemed to be a hybrid of structured motifs and eye rolling seizures, that the crowd seemed to conquer with by flailing their bodies to the beat. After performing such crowd favourites as
Babylove, Barbaric, and
Milk Bath, and wearing three different kinds of hat, Petite finished a set that felt like she could have gone on forever, and given that the crowd were the "
best ever" (according to Petite) they probably would have let her.
With her high notes and sax sounds still ringing in gardeners' ears she left the crowd confused by a mysterious blindfolded character on stage (that she left there) and a toothache from just how sweet she was.
Take a bite out of this cupcake and find out for yourself:
Petite Meller/Website
Petite Meller/Twitter
Petite Meller/Facebook
Do you remember her complete setlist?
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