Au Revoir Simone @ S. Mamede, Guimaraes
Captivating a mainstream world where Auto-tune is king is hard. And when it comes to a genre which goes in limbo between dreamy and psychedelic, beatbox kicking within synth atmosphere, you can imagine what it takes.
Au Revoir Simone are, let's face it, an odd bunch. Three geek-looking girls armed with a couple of keyboards and an electronic drum pattern box defy most of today's band recipes. But there's no real recipe with these girls: it just works fine.
The show was, as Erika Forster put it, divided in two different parts: the first one, very pleasant and very amusing - particularly to a few pre-teen hardcore fans on the first row - which she properly labeled as "the hit section of the show". This was probably the most antecipated hour, featuring most of their well-known songs and setting the right mood for a very participative crowd. As for the second part - "the psychedelic part" - the girls went a bit further with more experimental and heavier sounds; people almost felt like a different band was playing here and there - which was very interesting.
All in all, the band did what was expected: a mellow groove show with a chilled-out atmosphere which entertained the audience and left no-one disappointed.
Lady Gaga @ Gelredome, Arnhem
Last weekend I attended Lady Gaga's concert at the Gelredome in Arnhem, The Netherlands. I didn't have any trouble getting tickets two weeks before the date of the concert, and I didn't see people selling tickets outside the Gelredome, so I'm assuming it did not sell out. In any case, the Gelredome is huge: Gaga herself quoted an audience of 25.000 people. At €71.50 for main area (standing) tickets, the price was around the average for this kind of event. The audience was rather young on average, most people being around the 20-30 age group. A few mothers with extremely young and dressed-up girls were also to be seen.
The opening act was Semi Precious Weapons, a somewhat punkish-alternative rock band from New York (as their lead singer kept repeating). The act is not much about musical quality but more about performance, with the lead singer continuously repeating to the audience:
- The band's name
- How gorgeous he (the lead singer) is
- How the audience must be "wet for Lady Gaga", and how it's his task to do it
Not extremely interesting.
Lady Gaga's act started shortly after that, with a long intro followed by "Dance in the Dark", aptly sang behind a curtain for the first part. The visuals were stunning, with some kind of fractal/Rorschach colorful patterns reappearing throughout the act. The stage itself had a small catwalk ending on a circle towards the audience, which allowed for a closer contact with the fans (and those in the first row spent hours queuing outside). Above this circle, a structure with two circular panels doubled as light source and additional screens. Unfortunately, for as stunning as the visuals were, Gelredome failed to provide video streams with an acceptable size for the people watching the show far from the stage, as there were only two projections at the top left and right of the stage, but of a manifestly small size. The setlist was the usual one, with perhaps an interesting exception: at the piano, Gaga told how she had flown to New York the day before, and how she sung "Stand By Me". She proceeded to play the song on the piano, after a while inviting the band to join by saying "tag along, guys, it's in A". And so a new song is added to the show. As was my impression, Lady Gaga is a talented musician who does not sing out of tune and can play her own songs, improvise melodies and still impress with visuals. I also liked it that she does the remix version of LoveGame with Marilyn Manson singing in the background live, instead of just the standard version. She also manages to build a complex relationship with her fans, by crying upon seeing them with "Love Gaga" printer on paper hearts, and telling them they should love themselves, and not her. She also mentioned the Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 disaster during "Speechless", which got some people impressed. Probably all just good PR, but still, it works.
After the show, Gaga went for a walk in the Red Light District in Amsterdam. She will be back in the Netherlands with her never-ending tour in November.