words: Paulo Carmona (freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Paulo Carmona
Many went to Mouco to New Castle band Lanterns On The Lake first concert in Porto.
The band started with The Likes Of Us, Real Life and Every Atom. Right there it shows the band is instrumentaly very competent. Be it 9n the rhythm or the melodic section. The harmonic sequences are irreproachable.
Hazel Wilde’s lead vocals are impregnated with loud, vibrating sounds that perfectly dress the songs, fully tailored for her vocal range. As it is said, it fit like a glove. Indie rock set Mouco’s the room on fire with Blue Screen Beams, When It All Comes True and Rich Girls. Paul Gregory’s guitar is so intense that it is impossible for bodies not to vibrate with its riffs.
Before the encore, Hazel jokes a little with the cliché saying they will no behind that door and be right back with a few more song, which generates laughter. After the show, I wandered around and was left with the impression of a friend’s gathering in which between people who did not knew each other well. Music does such things.
Jozef van Wissem presented The Night Dwells In The Day, his latest album, last Sunday at Salão Novo Ático-Coliseu, Porto.
With his usual gloomy image of long hair and painted eyes, Jozef played his lute compositions. Interestingly, the first tracks were instrumental, some pre-recorded sounds supporting the slow, minimal, lute music. A few of the more electronic sounds displayed a certain sound experimentation leading to a strange, somehow dissonant contrast between the classic sound of the string instrument e the modemsoubd coming out of the laptop by Jozef’s side.
Silently, the audience listened in an introspective mood induced by melancholic baroque lute melodies. In a flashlight leave, Josef returns for an encore. Two more songs in his deeply cavernous voice were sung wrapping those attending in a melodically deeper, obscure ambient.
50 minutes flu by leaving the feeling it wasn’t enough.
words: Paulo Carmona (edited and freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: João Castro & Marcos Leal
Nothing more, nothingless than a colloquial conversation with music. . I’ve seen concerts with audience participation, but I have never witnessed to such close and afable dialogues between musicians and audience. It was really cute to watch.
From the start Marty didn’t stop telling jokes, stories, situations and events, and interjecting, in perfect symbiosis with the tone of one song after the other. Irish pub talk. Paraphrasing Marty: “The first song is called blah, blah, blah, is from blah, blah, blah album and was recorded at blah, blah, blah. Verbatim what I write you dear readers. Of course laughing and laughter echoed in unison through the room.
The duo presented itself with electro-acoustic folk guitar, violins, all its musical talent that was enough to the great celebration of their songs Tristesse, She’ll Come Back and Feed Your Mind in growing succession. Helpless You, I Don’t Think So, Almost With You where also sung, always growing to Into My Hands, You Whisper, Water Milkyway and Hopes and Fears.
The Celtic tone impregnated by the violin on the songs is contagious and Marty’s firgerstyle that goes along with is intense, memorable and extremely well performed. The songs breath among silence, rhythm and rather balanced vocals, between close or further from the microphone, depending of the flow and intensity. Brilliant in all its spendour.
Of note, the classical component brought by Olivia’s violin to the cheerful duo’s Celt folk inspired songs. There wasn’t an encore per se. Among clapping and request for more songs they didn’t left the stage. They prompty accept a presented with Melody of the Rain, Grind and Spark.Hard Rock Cafe room was already lively and kept being. Everyone was entitled to selfies, conversation and hugs with Marty and Olivia.
It is always good to feel such warmness from artists that know how to be upon a stage and set all star ways aside. The evening was cold and wet contrasting with what happened at the heart of the city. Pump pump heart.
American composer Charlemagne Palestine’s performarnce, , as part of Across Ø Around: Mika Vainio A Tribute was a mesmerizing experience of about 50 minutes.
Imersive is a beaten, too worn word, yet, here, for someone like me, who kept closed eyes, pretty much all the time, it is fitting. And quite descriptive.
Palestine start playing before the audience took its place in the pews. At first, a low, tremble leaning continuous hum. Given Igreja de Cedofeita seating seating, most people had their back turned to the pipe organ balcony, facing the empty altar. Having entering the empty room a little earlier, on the side pew, by the altar, that allows to turn and face the pipe organ and player, I had a prime location for allowing the sound, the music to lead and do its magic.
And its magic was a wonder world of tonal variations complementing, overlapping, at times almost making disappear, at others leaving it fully raw, a continuous hum. A hum, in itself, the same and diverse. The inflections, the detours, the shades, the sounds, the whispers, the tumoultous, all had its place in a linear-nonlinearsublime performance that included words of prayer in a language only known to Charlemagne Palestine’s and a short percutive moment with a couple of filled whisky glasses clacking against it other. A night to remember.
words: Marcos Leal (edited and freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Cláudia Lopes
Anglo-Libsnese Nadine Khouri is presenting her latest album, Another Life (produced by John Parish). She comes on stage with a drummer and a keyboardist and picks up her red guitar, before strumming the first chords. Attention is immediately called to her warm, silly voice, inspiring Lebanon deserted landscapes.
The sound draws towards David Lynch and Wim Wenders imagetic scenaries. It is worthy to mention Keep On Pushing These Walls, a song dedicated to Lhasa De Sela, Keep On Pushing These Walls, and another to those that had to live in exile. Her is music, alternative exotic cinematografic, makes us go on a roadtrip without leaving our seat.
It is John Grant’s time now., also in a redux emsemble: John, in the piano, and a keyboardist-back vocalist. When he starts to play what stands out is his strong voice and it’s tone. What sets him apart is the quality of his lyrics in which, satirically, he approaches human relationships, homosexuality, social issues. For the joy of the his fans, several songs from the debut album, Queen of Denmark, were played. John says he feels comfortable playing those because certain issues remain as corrent. Of notice was also the excellent piano solo by his pianist-keyboardist. One song was left to be played on the encore. The only weirdness in a beautiful performance was a member of the audience that insisted on speaking to John Grant and clap before the end of each song.
words: Marcos Leal (edited and freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Marcos Leal
Alan Sparhawk returns a year after the death of Mimi Parker, his life and musical companion. He is accompanied by three young musicians, one of them his son, on bass, the others bring a drummer and a banjo player., instruments that are characteristic of Alan Sparhawk’s music. The concery start quietly, but quickly the harshness of distortion and feedbacks of the lyrically heavier lyrics, in which Alan seemed to transmit and exorcize darker feelings arriveded. It was a concert with gruge roughness and indie-folk sweetness that received a good clapping at the end.
As for Lambchop presented a redux version. Kurt Wagner (vocals) and a pianist. A change that seemed to caught a few people by surprise. As the piano first notes were played, Kurt gestured along the music, like a conductor. Placing himself on the mic stand, his first vocals seemed to had caused a shift on the room. Owning a strong, deep voice, he sang song from the latest album, word by word with captivating mastery and presence, contracting with the simplicity of the production design. The lights didn’t even changed colour.
The minimalist approach may had not been for everyone. Those that stayed enjoyed Kurt’s and his pianist astistic quality until the end. They were irreproachandle and deserved the generous clappung before bed, as Kurt said they would go to sleep right after the encore.
words: Paulo Carmona (edited and freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Paulo Carmona .
Recently, a lot has been talked about music as therapy. Sometimes more rightly, others less so. As everything else these days. In a deciduous Sunday, the moon already a companion., a few hundred people, among them myself, witnessed the confirmation of the preamble I’ve just mentioned by watching The Saxophones.
They started with Lamplighter, and right there the atmosphere changed in the blink of an eye.The music melodic smoothness soaked Francisco de Assis with a perfumed swing retro pop, capable to craddle de most attention sentinel of a fortification in danger. It is a very contagious and appeasing sound.
Alexis Erenkov is a very compente and compassionate baritone. He allows the music to and speaks for itself, that he only adorns with his frail, almost naive, verses, at times, here and there, accompanied by Alison Alderlice’s sweet voice.Alternating between saxophone and guitar, and a transverse flute in Boy Crazy, the songs, very aesthetically similar between themselves, appeared in a slow, rhythm, intimate sequence.
Alexis confesses this is the first tour he plays saxophone. The original idea was ever to do so, but times and wills change and it happened. I confess that, to my delight, they played If You’re On The Water on the encore. And right afterwards, as closing, In My Defence. I left satiefied and peaceful among a sea of happy glowing people. As is wished on an early Autumn Sunday evening. Turns out it seemed to had been therapeutic to everyone. All the better.
It was an evening of Wimtrasts and counterpoints. Warmness, homeness, romanticism, afable communication – Francisco Sassetti – sparcity, dislocation, strangeness, non verbal speak – Win Mertens.
Portugue pianist and composer premiered his debut album, Home, Monday night. Home is a beautiful record filled with intimate, personal, homely, sacred even, pieces. It is also imbued in melancholy, joy, longing, wonder.
Talkative, Francisco told small stories and contextulized every theme throughout his performance. Opening in a nightly mood, with Home’s two nocturnes, Nocturne I and Nocturne II, moving to the journeying title track that leads us home after absense.
The next three pieces Francisca’s Dream, Francisco’s Jr Theme, Sara is Happy are dedicated, respectively to his daughter, his son and his wife. A little girl with a Ballon, in a carrousel, a young boy slaying a dragon, and a wife, mother, woman litting a room with her happiness. The piano translates the stories magnificently. Or the vignettes are magnificently played, in a reverie, with intensity, upbeatness sorrow, glow.
Francisco Sassetti’s performance ends with the wonderful, slightly somber, but rich is tone and soul, Music For Her.
Wim Mertens, , accompanied by trumpeter Ward Hoornaert, presented Voice Of The Living his album homage to all war victims. Voice Of The Living was commissioned by the Chancellary of the Belgium prime minister as part of the commemoration og the Great War (Work War I, 1914-1918).
It is an harrowing musical piece. Playing in November, with all that is going on, two days after Armistice Day (November 11,1918), the day of the end of war it was created to signal, it is sobering, chilling, beautiful, uncomfortable.
Mertens way of playing, more minimal leaning, heighlights the theme of the composition. The Piano runs free, is sound pointllism, while the trumpet holds it filling the atmosphere with a certain joy, at times, verging on exuberant happyness, but never fully crossing into glaring bright light.
In Mertens Voice Of The Living we feel the sense of loss, of desorientation, the discomfort, the wasteland. There are also glimpses of hope, of a better time among uncertainty.
Libreto:
Francisco Sassetti:01 – Nocturne I; 02 – Nocturne II; 03 – Home; 04 – Goodbye; 05 – Filipa’s Dream; 06 – Francisco Jr.’s Theme; 07 – Sara Is Happy; 08 – Inocência II; 09 – Music for Her
Wim Mertens: 01 – Too good, too loose; 02 – Glossary raisonné; 03 – Escape and recapture; 04 – Pondichéry; 05 – On the Zephyrous Peak; 06 – Continuous pushforwards; 07 – Nota notae; 08 – Watch!; 09 – Phaedra; 10 – Constance; 11 – Prudence; 12 – Far; 13 – Struggle for Pleasure; 14 – Close Cover
words: Marcos Leal (edited and freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos:Marcos Leal
Musician, composer, producer, visual artist are several of the sides multi-instrumentalist John David Padgett, aka Johnny Jewel, Other than his career as a musician in Glass Candy and Chromatics, and owner of record label Italians Do It Better, Jewel gained recognition through producing film soundtracks.
Jewel steps on stage and starts uncovering the black clothing that cover the keyboards and synthsisers with which he will play. Drive and Bronson are two of his best known cinema pieces. It is precisely cinema that fuels his solo debut European tour. As Jewel himself would say towards the end of the concert, an experimental trial tour to see how the audience perceives it.
Jewel shows his aesthetic attention by presenting himself in a classic red suit, face painted as shades of characters of films like A Clockwork Orange, that, commanding the synthsisers creates with total harmony and synchrony along the screened film images. Retro aesthetics, violence, sex, mystery, are marked characteristics of the cinema with which Jewel so well creates the atmosphere that leaves viewers immerse in the sound and image experience. The performance developed in a crescendo of intensity, interrupted by a false ending. When returning, Jewel took the opportunity to address the audience and play two more tracks, the last one the remarkable theme of project Desire – Under your Spell from the film Drive soundtrack. That is how the performance ends. With Johnny Jewel wrapping back the instruments in black clothing.
words: Marcos Leal (edited and freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Marcos Leal
Devendra Banhart presented Flying Wig, his new album, at Theatro Circo in Braga. He was preceed by H. Hawkline, his guitarist. Hawkline warmed the ears and a few arms with his bass tender voice, seated on the middle of the stage gently accompanied by his guitar.
An unexpected, but very pleasant and well received performance, bringing humour to the audience with his relaxed communication.
Good disposition and at easiness were also present at Devendra Banhart’s performance. Known by his stage eccentricity, here he presented himself in a simple, relaxed manner, a little bit a reflex of Flying Wig’s music, calmer and meditative.
Live, his, on this album, more ethereal freak-folk,, seemed to hug and cradle. Dispute singing about life’s issue, he does it in a way that breathes calm and levitates the soul.
Between songs, Devendra walked around the stage, murmuring away from the microphone, toying with the audience that tried to understand when someone told him to speak louder. Maybe that was the purpose. Devendra toyed a number of times in his quiet manner, always in a sweet tone, at times with an “obrigado” that he found long, often shortened to “obri”or” gado. Or when he presented his backing band. Especially with Welshman H Hawkline, músico galês, going on a comic translation of what the guitarist was saying in Welsh.
Devendra is, probably, one of the coolest musicians I’ve had the pleasure of seen live. Given one of his best known songs was missing, the concert could not finish without the traditional encore. Carmensita was farewell from Devendra & Co. with thank and waves you to the audience while heading backstage.
Mondo Bizarre Magazine 