I found out about Crystal Stilts in 2009. I liked them from the beginning, and also this new album did not disappointed me. Yesterday night i saw them in Kbh, and now i can confirm my respect for this band. Good vibes and tidy execution! They made me cheerful and they were even able to make my tired legs keeping the rhythm.
I've already talked about "just a number" that now are Battlekat. I saw them today at the TrailerPark and I enjoyed the show very much. This song is 100% scandinavian electro-pop.
Tomorrow i'll be voluteering for god knows how many hours and the day after i'll be standing on my feet again at work. So i want to have a good sleep, even if i could have seen Yacht tonight. They were scheduled at 2.
Right, i am back from Poland. And I forgot to tell that I've been to Warsaw to see Chew Lips. The concert was scheduled for 9pm, but the band got on stage only at 11.15. We were basically the first guests in this new squat-industrial concert venue called "1500 square meters". Huge. I really liked it, lots of poorly furnished rooms. Truly decadent Eastern European style. Well...my friend was in love with Tiggs and took a thousands pictures of her. I have to say she is pretty good on stage. It is hard to take pics at concerts, and actually they are not that good. 45minutes concert with a polish girls shaking her big xxx and her pony tail in front of me. Mmm... A part from that, the concert was a bit disappointing. Maybe not for the short gig, but for the ungiven encore and the single Toro they did not play. She had a cold she said. Might be true, her voice was a bit broken and that was just the first date of the European tour. I hope they'll get better.
Friday night all flatmates leave thier nice maison in Nantes heading Rennes. Tonight there's the Beach House concert. I knew the band, i like it. I have been listening to the last album for a while, and i found it quite good without becoming a fan. But yesterday, the concert was really, really good. Good sound, good scenario, impeccable voice. Her voice...there's something that i can't understand. It is pretty low to be a female voice and sometime she sounds like not being able to reach fully certain highs, but at the end it works. And actually, this is mainly what makes Beach House, the Beach House.
Et ouais, je suis partie à la Route du Rock finalement.
Three days of good music, and less good weather The first day was a bit cold but fine, we could fully enjoy the concerts: from the early and for me unknown Yann Tiersen to an awesome Caribou performing at 2.50 at night.
The second day started with a holy damned storm. Rain and rain and rain for about 10 hours. I was in a really punk-squat-festival mood and my equipment was really poor. So i spent the day walking around Saint Malo and waiting for the shuttle bus to the concert area under the rain, completely wet with 13 degrees...gneee...no, it was not fun at all. A cause of this shitty bus service we also missed much of the Foals concert. I was a bit skeptic, I don't know the new album that much, and a part Spanish Sahara I wasn't impressed. But the performance was pretty good and it makes listen better the album. You could imagine the condition of the site after all that water falling down the sky, I was so pissed off and tired that I was on the point to go to the camping to take out the wet clothes, but I wanted to see Two Doors Cinema Club so bad that i finally decided to stay. I don't regret my choice because the performance cheered me up completely after that shitty day.
I missed We Have Band at 2.30 but, well, let's say...i know what I missed.
Finally the last day. In the morning rain again, so we went to Saint Malo, to have a good lunch, and seesighting a bit. This time we went by car so we didn't have to deal with the **** shuttle bus. Nice afternoon with some brandnew French friends. Night with The National, maybe not the most suitable group for a festival, but good execution and interpretation. Love the melancholic tone of the often criticized voice of the singer. A fantasmagoric, rather softporn, show from the Flaming Lips (more show than concert maybe)
to end with an easy dancing The Rapture. I really appreciated their last number, that I found out it is called Olio and i propose here below, even if live it was much more effective.
Just back from a weekend in Aarhus full of concerts and music. For the moment just a bite of an Icelandic band that offered an amazing gig. The audience was crazy about them, forty minutes of dancing and jumping. Later, leaving the concert hall and heading some other scenes, everybody was just singing this melody. Frankly, it took me sometime to get rid of it in my head as well.
Odense is the city of Christian Andersen, the third biggest city in Denmark. Denmark is a small country consisting of a load of islands. The island of Fyn is found between the Danish peninsula Jylland and the island where Copenhagen is found: Sjælland. You would be probably wondering the reason of this short lecture on Danish geography. Well, just to introduce you to the concert i saw yesterday night.
In fact, the Kissaway Trail are from Odense, and yesterday they played at the StudentHouse in Aalborg. Yesterday i've been working at the door until 11, while the support band was playing. Then i could enjoy the headliner concert. Good. Pretty good. I liked it. I knew a couple of their songs, they are strongly influenced by Arcade Fire. A friend of mine also said by the Mew, another Danish band, but i am not that convinced. The concert was pretty good, a bit slow maybe, the songs sounded even more mild than in the album, while i would have apprecieated a little bit of additional rhythm. The concert hall wasn't that full, i thought there would have been a lot more people, as the band has been touring in the US, and now is playing all around Europe. NME radio broadcasts its songs daily, and reviews of their gigs can be found in many musical blogs. Always more and more surprised and impressed by the musical scene of this lille dansk land.
Still amazed by the yesterday night Efterklang concert. Denifitely, the best gig of the year. It has been a while since I felt like crying during a performance. My hands couldn't clap enough for them. Airy choirs and music from the sky. It reminds me a bit of a Toy Orchestra. The lead singer looks like a tall and skinny puppet, but he was anything but a dead body on the stage. On the contrary he was pretty good at dragging us into their music.
All of us...we were all-wrapped up into the Efterklang's music for souls.
Second date, second sold out in Denmark for the English surprise indie band of last autumn: The XX.
Struggling against an implacable wind, some hundreds of people stay in a line to get in the VoxHall, the second largest venue club in Denmark. Loads of Ray-Ban wayfarer and checked shirts: Aarhus hipsters seem to have a meeting here tonight, but there are also some teenagers and even people in their forties.
An electro duo from Canada, The New Look, warms the atmosphere up, while the hall is getting crowded, and the audience alcoholic level starts reaching the Danish standards.Finally, when the West-end London trio steps on the stage it is about ten. Two voices, one guitar, one bass, a keyboard and a drum machine, Ladies and Gentleman: The Xx.
After Baria Qureshi left the band last November, now it 's Jamie taking care of both the keyboards and electro beats elements, and he seems to be doing all right. At the same time, Romy and Olivier’s voices play together in a pure intermitted cosmic melancholy. The audience is caught by the magnetic look of Olivier who, shows, although he’s barely twenty, how well can attract girls’ attention, as a girl watching the gig next to me confirms. On the contrary, Romy’s weak scenic impact empowers her shady figure: she’s dark and meek, like the words of her lyrics. Song after song the concert flows well, with just few interruptions, just to thanks the audience and present the mushy cover by Kyla, Do you mind, perfectly in line with the sweet gloomy atmosphere created during the performance.
It was nice to listen to a good quality execution of each song, concerning both vocal and instrumental arrangements. Too bad for the very bad amplification of voices and basses, especially at the beginning, as, dissociating the sound balance, it ruined the well-compact instrumental background of the in studio recording. The concert ends in less than an hour.
On the whole a good concert, even if something making the difference was still missing. Something able to turn a good gig into an amazing spectacle. Perhaps, it was a lack of experience; the ability to make lyrics alive, dragging the audience into the music world. The missed fusion between the stage and the public made people sing flattery hooks, as they were more focused on their own singing pleasure than on taking possession of the sweet apathy of the band.
But as their name reviles, the XX are only twenty years old, and they can already boast of a particular sound that made them the welcome surprise last autumn. Then, we will see…on the way to the artistic (but not only) adulthood…
