I survived last nights Viva! tour and boy I'm telling you it was worth seeing.
Norman Palm looked the sterotypical geek-chic singer-/acoustic guitar-man but overcame the fact that it must be the shittiest shitmost feeling to be playing for a big room full of about 3 people to really deliver a heartwarming and touching performance. His cover of The Cure's 'Boy's don't cry' was extraordinary. "Forget real brass instruments, because you've got a perfectly good mouth for imitating trumpets..."
I think Norman's right-hand-man Janne stole the show though. The fella just calmly whipped out a new instrument after every song and during the last song of the set quite possibly played: 2 synths, a melodica, stompbox, a miniature calypso drum and a xylophone all at the same time. Watching him was quite mesmerising.
Zebra & Snake entered the stage with the air of a comedy duo about them. Singer/synthdude had the whole "Jay minus the Silent Bob" thing going on.
The other guy just looked really up for attempting copulation with any instrument he could get his hands on.
Dry-humping your synth with your trousers dangling dangerously from your arse whilst "busting moves like it's 1999" is so 2010.
They did however sound very good. Sort of like Robert Smith leading vocals on a New Order track, backed by Kaiser-man Ricky Wilson yelping "oooh's" and "aah's". The only problem was the lack of audience, so the dancefloor remained untouched for the whole of the set.
BUT! after this came Joensuu 1685 and they have now slotted in as best live performance I've witnessed (after Crystal Castles at Flow 2008 of course)
They just about captured everything I love about live gigs. Pulsating drums and hypnotising basslines, and "lead-man" just layering beautiful noise on top of all of this. During one of their many elongated moments I already felt myself slipping away from consiousness of being when the "light show" started. "FUCK ME IF I'VE EVER EXPERIENCED SUCH A COMPLETE LOST IN THE MOMENT FEELING EVER!!"
Oh yeah haha. Was told that we had a student party last night. Yet again I feel like a bad member of my student group for not attending.
The theme was "traffic lights"
Dresscode was colour coded:
Green if ur single
Red if ur spoken for
Yellow if ur facebook status is "it's complicated blahblahblah"
If I'd have gone I'd have gone as a walking rainbow just to confuse people.
Hmmm.. What else? This is becoming a monster post but I added Camera Obscura's My Maudlin Career to my record collection. nicely nice
I loved Viva! yesterday in Tampere as well (and also was disturbed by the dry-humping act).
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, My Maudlin Career is just wonderful. Wonderfully wonderful.
I'm glad us here weren't the only ones to witness the "Man loves bass guitar slightly too much" act. But hopefully someone up your way had the nerve to throw some shapes on the floor, 'cos that's deffo what it needed.
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