This set took a long time to get going. Literally, English singer/songwriter Sophie Ellis-Bextor didn't hit the stage until almost a half-hour after she was supposed to, which was quite the contrast from the night before when the main stage was fairly dialed in. About ten minutes after Ellis-Bextor's scheduled start time, they brought out nine or so Olympic athletes from Vancouver Island who'd represented Canada in Paris earlier this summer, and the crowd gave them a nice round of applause.
After that, a complete sound check took place, with techs threading cables across the stage while others went through all the drum mics, then the keys, then lead guitar, then bass, etc. There turned out to be more wait after the Olympians than there was before them, so the athletes might as well have stayed out on stage a while longer to bask in the appreciation, maybe throw some souvenir javelins into the crowd or something.
Thankfully, Ellis-Bextor didn't waste any time once she arrived, taking us straight into her disco bedroom with her update on Swedish nu-disco outfit Alcazar's hit from the year 2000, "Crying at the Discoteque." As she high kicked and shimmied across the stage, she perfectly played the part of a classic disco diva in the style of Donna Summer or Grace Jones, covered in sequins and streamers that accentuated her flamboyant movements. Her band was perfection all night too, like seeing Cerrone live with a happenin' quartet, so it's a fun and funky sound, a deeply joyous spectacle to behold.
With Ellis-Bextor simply saying that we were going to have fun that night, the Alcazar moved naturally into her twinkling take on Cher's 1979 Casablanca Records single "Take Me Home," which appeared on Ellis-Bextor's 2001 debut album Read My Lips. Her set leaned heavily on her first full-length, with Ellis-Bextor playing funkadelic renditions of "Music Gets the Best of Me" as well as "Get Over You" and her Spiller collab "Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)," both from the expanded reissue of Read My Lips.
A couple of songs into her performance, Ellis-Bextor noted that this was her first ever Canadian music festival, and that she might be peaking. She had a wonderful day, riding around the sea with her husband on bicycles, and they even saw a whale. She said she could live in Victoria, and she really meant it as she brought up moving here again near the end of her set.
At one point, it almost seemed like Ellis-Bextor was hitting on Victoria, insisting we had such nice chemistry that she believed we could all do the largely arm-based choreography for "Hypnotized," her 2022 collaboration with Scottish musician Wuh Oh. An impressive amount of people actually did it, crowded as they were. Later, during "Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)," she coaxed the crowd into shimmying along with her.
Ellis-Bextor's take on ABBA's classic "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" was absolutely delightful, and a wonderful follow-up to when Channel Tres surprisingly led a "Dancing Queen" sing-along during his DJ set the night before, yet her biggest cover was arguably her version of Madonna's "Like a Prayer." The disco ball came down in her bedroom while the windows were replaced by stained glass, and people belted out Madge with her as they exorcized their demons on the dancefloor.
Ellis-Bextor wasn't done with Victoria yet, though, as she informed us. She took us from the church to the stadium with "Heartbreak (Make Me A Dancer)" from her 2011 album Make a Scene. She jumped around so much that she lost her breath for a moment after that one.
Before launching into her closing number, Ellis-Bextor noted that she had been in the business for 25 years at that point. This was the end of her current North American tour, and though she was flying back home to her five kids the next day, she wasn't kidding about moving to Victoria. In her words, "Anywhere that has a book shop called 'Book Shenanigans' has got to be a good place."
As you would assume, for their slick lounge disco closer "Murder on the Dancefloor," her bassist was wearing a shark mask, her guitarist was in an ape mask, and her keyboardist had a dinosaur mask. It looked like her drummer was going commando, but I was pretty far back, and they were backlit, so the exact details were a little fuzzy. I'm pretty sure the shark ate the ape, though. Circle of life, murder on various surfaces and whatnot… Whatever. The point is that Sophie Ellis-Bextor is very awesome live.