I like Mika. He’s puts heavy emphasis on both the “glam” and “pop” in glampop. I do have to admit that I was a little jealous last year when my very smart friend Deborah Barnard reviewed his sold the hell out Valentine’s Day show at the Showbox Sodo and wrote:

While the performance plowed through most (if not all) of the songs off his debut album, Mika’s vocals were impeccable — despite a sheepish apology mid-show for having a cold. With the way his voice clearly hit the high, soaring notes that were scattered throughout the song list for the night, though, you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise…

For the finale, despite being sick, Mika bounded back on stage. We just didn’t know it at the time. The first song was done behind a large white scrim to the tune “Teddy Bear’s Picnic” and had band members frolicking into a wolf-induced orgy by the end of it; Mika emerged at the end, tearing off his wolf-head. The final song of the night, “Lollipop,” involved girls in Alice in Wonderland dresses dancing with suckers bigger than they were; at the end of the song, confetti and balloons streamed down on the audience like a New Years Eve countdown.

Flash forward a year and a half and the Lebanon-born Mika is coming back to town with a new album called The Boy Who Knew Too Much. He’ll be bringing his act to the Moore on October 26. We have a pair of tickets to give away to a lucky reader. Here’s what you need to do: send an e-mail to tig@threeimaginarygirls.com before 9am on Friday, October 16 with “CartoonMotion” in the subject line and your mailing address in the body of the e-mail. Easy enough, right?

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdbBSnRxOmE]