In April of 2021, I saw L’Impératrice live at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles. Three years later, the thing that stands out about that show is how hard everyone danced.. There was one point when singer Flore Benguigui got low and the audience did the same.

I was in the balcony that night and, from my vantage point, I saw a broken heart totem and a crown totem bouncing above bobbing heads. When L’impératrice turned songs from Tako Tsubo, like “Submarine” and “Peur des filles” into full-blown disco jams — the latter sounding like “Love to Love You, Baby”— it felt like the crowd was moving as a single body. Before that night, I had spent more than a month listening to Tako Tsubo  on repeat, partially because I interviewed L’Impératrice for Audiofemme, but also because the album quickly became a favorite of mine for that year. But, L’Impératrice live is a whole other level of wild energy that I hadn’t heard in their recordings, at least until now.