Sébastien Tellier is a silly guy who takes love seriously. He writes danceable earworms the way only a true romantic and multi-instrumentalist can. I got to witness the Tellier talent firsthand at KCRW’s Berkeley Studios. The audience was already spontaneously swaying as he saucily shimmied between the microphone and piano in white trousers – a fashion choice for men that I usually cringe at  – but he looked good, pulling them off as only a Frenchman can.

Tellier introduced his favorite song , “L’amour et la violence,” as “just another love song.” He makes these passionate opposites – love and violence- pair seamlessly, as if both sad and divine. Sébastien has a way of combining paradoxes with grace – like a perfectly balanced cocktail of tenderness and sado-masochistic play. As he sang “Dis-moi ce que tu penses” in his dulcet voice, my Italian friend leaned over and whispered the translation in my ear: “Tell me what you think.”

The next day, I visited Tellier at the Belasco, where he was rehearsing before that evening’s performance. He arrived late and apologetic, without his trademark sunglasses. I had prepared to ask: Can I see your eyes? His blue eyes answered before I could ask the question.

He asked his wife, Amandine, to bring his glasses™. While we waited, I asked if he was referring to himself as “the Beast” in his new album, Kiss the Beast.

PURPLE: Do you consider yourself “the Beast”?

SÉBASTIEN: You’re going to start there?

For me, the interview had already begun with my eyes meeting his baby blues. After he put on the glasses, the familiar Sébastien Tellier image came together and the armor of his persona came up. Was I watching Tellier assemble his persona -is this curated image his way of expressing his beast? Perhaps, Kiss the Beast is a lighthearted way of kissing our own shadows, taming the beasts within. By giving “the beast” a stage, Tellier turns uglier feelings into an infectious, seductive electropop spectacle. He truly is a showman.

At KCRW, Tellier had the aura of a lounge singer crossed with a Euro-electro epic-pop rock star. His hands moved softly through the air, subtle and ephemeral, almost hypnotically casting spells. Occasionally, he touched his crotch. Held for a moment like a still frame, the gesture was both ordinary and deliberate, like a love tap. He’s a tease.

When I asked about it, Tellier said, “I’m just touching my body.” He told me he often imagines dancing with Amandine on the dance floor. I suggested that love could be sad – he agreed. He is drawn to minor chords, melancholy, and nostalgia, and said he is sad just like everybody else.

He is a serious man who plays all the time. Perhaps it is that contradiction that gives his songs their pulse, an electronic heartbeat urging the body to move -to dance -to touch itself. If Kiss the Beast taught me anything, it is this: in all seriousness, play.