Mondo Bizarre Magazine Concert Reviews, Concerts

Lloyd Cole, Casa da Música, Porto, 28.04.2024.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Paulo Carmona

words: Paulo Carmona freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Paulo Carmona

Lloyd Cole is one of those unique cases in which a man, a guitar and his voice manage to give an whole concert in which the audience does not fall into a dragged sleepleness apathy like. There are several factors for that: The first one is the voice to be in shape in the highs and lows and the knowledge of using breathing to achieve what is intended.

Another factor to have in consideration is the compentency is the playing of the electro-acoustic guitar. The rhythms, the freestyle, the intensity, the silences and the arpeggios. All very well played and pertinent to the flow of the songs. And the songs, of course.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Paulo Carmona

When a song is well written, well harmonized and has a poem that tailor suits it because it is felt, loved and conceived since it naturally; with guitar and voice, or orchestra it will always be a great song. That was what, once more, Lloyd Cole offered us. Always nice and afectous, supported by is British humour, including about mid concert pause, explaining it is mandatory for guys his age, he was an excellent entertainer from beginning to end.

The menu included more introspective songs such as Like Lovers Do, My Other Life, 2 CV, Today I’m Not So Sure, The Afterlife, The Idiot, Butterfly and more iconic and uplifted songs like Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken, Jennifer She Said, Brand New Friend, Perfect Skin and Undressed. On the much demanded and thanked encore Lost Weekend and Forest Fire were played.

On my way home, on the aftermath, I was thinking a cup of hot tea and sweet, sweet biscuits would be right the thing.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Paulo Carmona
Mondo Bizarre Magazine Concert Reviews, Concerts

Kristin Hersh, Auditório Francisco de Assis, Porto, 21.04.2024.

words: Neno Costa (freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Telma Mota

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Telma Mota

The tracery of Sparky (Hips and Makers, 1994) filled the wideness of the stage until Kristin Hersh’s voice filled the room with Eyeshine (Clear Pound Road, 2023) casting out ghosts that seemed to threaten Throwing Muses’muse at every turn.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Telma Mota


Lady of lyrics tinted by experience and personal conflicts, braided with a pop folk sound under a harsh vocal sky Kristin Hersh and her acoustic guitar run through thirty years of career, including her time with Throwing Muses, in an intimate, mature, flowing performance in choices such as Your Ghost (Hips and Makers, 1994), Kay Catherine (Throwing Muses, 2020), Your Dirty Answer (Sonny Border Blue, 2001) or Ms Haha from her latest album.


It would have been wonderful to prolong this golden moment of the musical calendary, electrically wrapped with The Cuckoo (Hips and Makers, 1994) and English folk song open to interpretations, cladled as a goodbye.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Telma Mota

Mondo Bizarre Magazine Concerts

BDRMM, Mouco, Porto, 06.04.2024.

words: Marcos Leal (freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Marcos Leal.

Hull band Bdrmm awaited first concert in Porto finally happened. Bdrmm came to download their electric showgaze mantle upon an audience split between a sound delight and happy talk.It was remarkable the way the band was applauded and cherished by the audience, leaving the quarter rather pleased, and, in a way, apparently surprised with such reaction, multiplying thanks you at each song. For about one and a half hour Bdrmm downloaded a stream of songs that satisfied the wishes of their fans, starting with Alps, carrying on with Be Careful.

Then, melodically loud with songs like Gush, Push/Pull, Happy, one of their greatest hits, here almost unrecognisable among a deluge of distortion, until, at, last, arriving at a good Port, um thrilling cheering by from the audience and thanks by Bdrmm.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Marcos Leal
Mondo Bizarre Magazine Concert Reviews, Concerts

F.M. Einheit – Associação de Moradores da Bouça, Porto, 15.03.2024.

The Club Meets the Drill

© Renato Cruz Santos/Cultura em Expansão

words: Raquel Pinheiro; photos: Renato Cruz Santos/Cultura em Expansão We are at one of those places most would not associate with industrial music, Associação de Moradores da Bouça, a local residents society, founded in 1975. Through Porto’s City Hall programme Cultura em Expansão, Associação de Moradores da Bouça has been helding events, like diferent sorts of concerts, including more fringe ones.

© Renato Cruz Santos/Cultura em Expansão

There are too many of us gathered in the patio outside the concert room. Which goes to show that fringes can be relative. F.M. Einheit became known to if not all, most of us in attendance, when he was part of Einstürzende Neubauten, that he left in 1995.

The planned seated concert is turned into a stand up one in order for everyone to be able to attend. That changes things a little or the audience. In chairs, we would easily be able to see the images of the projections that accompanied F.M. Einheit’s demolitions, cracking, pouring of materials, playing a gigantic spring with a drill.

© Renato Cruz Santos/Cultura em Expansão

The video projections come with background sounds and beats. A mix of clubbing grooves, voices, mechanical, machinery noises. From where I stand for most of the concert, by the door and the mixing desk, it is not easy to see the images or, other than the playing of spring & drill, what is F.M.’s up to. I can hear sounds and see a glimpse of what looks like a workbench with a few things upon it. Wood plaques? Bricks? And what is FM pouring from a big bucket? Gravel? Whatever it is, it makes for an harrowing sound.

© Renato Cruz Santos/Cultura em Expansão

The evening will keep being filled with contrasts, dissonances, resonances, peculiar noises. And thee drill!

Mondo Bizarre Magazine Concerts, Reviews

Lanterns On The Lake, Mouco, Porto, 27.01.2024.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Paulo Carmona

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.

Mondo Bizarre Magazine Concerts, Reviews

Jozef van Wissem, Salão Novo Ático-Coliseu, Porto, 21.02.2024.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Marcos Leal

words: Marcos Leal (freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Marcos Leal

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.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Marcos Leal
Mondo Bizarre Magazine Concerts, Reviews

Marty & Olivia Willson-Piper, Hard Rock Cafe, Porto, 30/11/2023.

© João Castro

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.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Marcos Leal

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.

© João Castro

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.

© João Castro

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.

© João Castro

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.

© João Castro

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.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Marcos Leal
Mondo Bizarre Magazine Concert Reviews, Concerts

The Saxophones, Auditório Francisco de Assis, Porto, 19.11.2023.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Paulo Carmona

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.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Paulo Carmona

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.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Paulo Carmona

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.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Paulo Carmona

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.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Paulo Carmona
Mondo Bizarre Magazine Concert Reviews, Concerts

Corinne Bailey Rae – Misty Fest, Casa da Música, Porto, 05.11.2023.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Marcos Leal

British singer Corinne Bailey Rae didn’t lie when, right before playing A Spell, A Prayer, invited the audience to ,“… to a spell of pleasure”. Corinne entered the stage like a wizard, wrapped in cloak resembling Merlin’s one, rocked by her band’s music ready to bewitch.

words: Marcos Leal (edited and freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Marcos Leal

At each rest, Corinne spoke of the inspiration behind each song of her latest record, composed after a visit to the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicado, a 1923 bank building turned arts and archive center for the people of South Side.

An exhibition with strong afro-american and racial segregation in the United States, curated by Theaster Gates, lead Corinne to a number of objects that would be the driving force behind Black Rainbows. Given the diversity of influences and Corinne’ need to properly live express the feelings brought by the inspirational objects the record proved to be very dynamic in concert.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Marcos Leal

Some may had been surprised by such versatility from the singer when New York Transic Queen (an old beauty pageant) was performed in a more rock way, steaming from a photo of former model Audrey Smaltz, that took Corinne to compose a more rebellious and feminist song.

The evening highlight was Put it Down, introduzido by the story of a party at Stony Island Arts Bank in celebration of dj Frankie Knuckles. Corinne tells that at the entrance there was a big jar where people would drop a piece of paper with whatever worried or tormented them.

At a point, fire was thrown inside the jar and everyone danced as a community like what had been written in those pieces of paperhsd stop having so much weight upon people. And that was how,, in Put it Down, the audience was contaminated by the music dancing and smiling along Corinne in the middle of room, a few hugs and emotional words shinning in their faces.

Music really has an incredible power and Corinne and her fantastic musicians turned the night into a celebration and freedom of the worries that torment our days making us forget the outer world for a little bit.

© Mondo Bizarre Magazine/Marcos Leal
Mondo Bizarre Magazine Entries

STOP! Cultura Não Se Cala! | STOP! Culture Does Not Shut Up!

Podendo, é ir. Não podendo, é partilhar, protestar, fazer ruído! If you can, go. If not, share, protest, make noise!
Cultura não se cala! STOP | Culture does not shut up! STOP
Segunda feira, 24 Julho | Monday, 24th July
Porto: Concentração às 15h em frente a CMP | Gathering 3pm in front of Porto’s City Hall
Marcha até ao STOP 19h20 | Marching until STOP (Rua do Heroísmo, 329) 7:30pm

Lisboa: Concentração às 15h em ao Teatro Dona Maria II | Gathering 3pm in front of Teatro Dona Maria II