The gig season is back on. It took me a while to get out of the festival atmosphere, but now indoor gigs feel right again. I went to see Explosions In The Sky earlier this month, but last week felt like the real start of the new gig season. First up were Reverend And The Makers (Botanique) and Starsailor (AB), and neither of them dissapointed.
Reverend And The Makers were catchy, energetic and bold in a way a rock band should be. Singer Jon McClure seemed to quite impressed by the Belgian audience (something that doesn't happen too often) and took us outside ("You, me, outside!") to play some more acoustic tunes (including The Beatles' 'Revolution') in the beautiful Botanique gardens. Was an awesome night, good music and a lot of friends around.
Starsailor was pretty amazing as well. They sound a lot live like they do on their albums, which is usually a thing I don't like that much, because you go to gigs to get something slightly different from what you already have on a compact disc. I didn't mind it with Starsailor though, because James Walsh seemed so passionated whilst singing. It's hard to believe that a band with so much love for what they do is going to split (at least for a while).
I've been to three gigs during the last few weeks.
1. Franz Ferdinand at the Ancienne Belgique
I'd seen Franz play once before, at the Rock Werchter festival a couple of years ago. Back then, they were good, but if I am completely honest, by far not as great as I had expected them to be. That fact makes it extra weird that I was prepared to pay 50 euros for this gig at the AB. I guess it must've been some unconscious faith in their ability to do better than what I saw at that festival. If that's the case, I was right, because this gig was exactly what I had already wanted the previous one to be. It was energetic, exiting, sexy and wild. I think I might've seen every corner of the venue and it is quite likely that I have lost some hair in the middle of the enthuastic crowd, but it was all worth it.
Highlights: all the hits, and they've played loads of them, but I guess This Fire and Michael were my favourite moments. Also, the ending of the gig when Alex jumped into the audience and everybody wanted to touch him. Support Act: Kissogram, German electro-pop act with a singer that resembled Alex Kapranos a fucking lot. Pretty good, though!
2. White Lies at the Botanique
I'm pretty much into the White Lies debut album so I was really looking forward to see them live. They left me behind with mixed feelings. One part of me thinks it was an amazing gig. I mean, Harry McVeigh's voice is genious and sounds at least as good on stage as it does on an album. Plus, songs like 'A Place To Hide' (very Joy Division, that is) and 'Death' were performed brilliantly. On the other hand, I was kind of disappointed. Except for a couple of songs (including the two named above), White Lies didn't manage to give their music the intensity it needs. To use a comparison they're probably already tired of hearing: they can't make me feel the way a band like Editors can (each time over again, and I've already seen them five times). So, good gig, but not brilliant.
Highlights: Death, A Place To Hide, the pale lighting. Support act: Haunts. They knicked half of their bass lines from Michael Jackson, but apart from that they kind of blew everyone away.
3. Electric Six at the VK
I went to this gig with my sister, mainly because we both love the über kitsch hit 'Danger! High Voltage'. The gig was exactly what we'd expected it to be: one big (and kitschy) party! :)
Highlights: Danger! High Voltage, Gay Bar, Future is in the future, Dick Valentine's capes, moves and expressions.
Sooo, another exam that went well. Still worrying about that first one, though. Worrying or no worrying, Wednesday night was lovely. Even though I was really tired when I left home, I became full energy when I arrived at the Botanique for the Little Man Tate gig. The support act was terrible - even though the songs were pretty good, all the band members were really amateuristic and during each riff he played, the guitar player had this look on his face like he was playing a very impressive solo. Little Man Tate was really good, though. I didn't expect so, but the singer was absolutely fantastic (and really charming and cute). They played a lot of new songs, not all equally impressive, but mostly fine enough and often extremely catchy!
I might have been the youngest person in the audience when I went to see Luka Bloom earlier this week, although I don't know why. I mean, the man doesn't make shiny electro-pop/rock tunes, but he takes the genre of folk so far beyond what we often assume it is.
Luka performed over an hour and a half. You might think that's a bit too much to listen to one single guy with nothing but an (electro)acoustic guitar, but...wrong! His guitar play is amazing enough to fill the entire space without feeling the limits of typical folk music. And of course, he's got loads of great songs to pick from. It became a really lovely night.
During the gig a woman screamed 'that was amazing!'. She and Luka started talking and after a while she asked for the flowers (Luka brings flowers to his gigs and hands them over to someone in the audience at the ending)and yeh, she got them.
After the gig, I met Luka and he told me he was actually planning on giving the flowers to me. :( The woman was standing near us and Luka made her give me 'at least one flower'. :) He was so very nice!
More Botanique fun last week, when I went to see Blood Red Shoes.
I was supposed to do an interview with the band, but Laura-Mary (singer, guitarist) lost her passport the day before which caused some troubles. She only turned up around 9.30pm, so I could forget about my interview. (instead, I went to Elke and Karolien, who were going to the gig as well. Elke had her parents' car that week, so I could stay with her after the gig, she said)
Fortunately, Blood Red Shoes made up for it with a really good gig. It was all about good music, moshpits and yeh, even dancing on stage. Gerlin and Phara (from Neon Enlightenment) got the permission from Steven (singer, drummer) to climb on stage during It's Getting Boring By The Sea. They were sweet enough to help me on stage as well, and by the end of the song we were joined by heaps of people. It was hypnotizing. And it was all filmed and posted on YouTube - I'm the girl in the front who is hugging the girl in the red dress (that's Gerlin).
After buying half the merchandising away (Karolien got her some buttons, Elke picked out a beautiful poster and I went for the LP) and letting the band sign every single piece of it, we went back to the car (which we had left in a garage). That was our intention, at least.
Although Elke had carefully ensured we picked a parking that stayed open long enough, we didn't seem to be able to get in anymore. We even tried another entrance than the one we had used to get out, but same story there.
Midnight subways in Brussels aren't much of a great idea for three girls all by themselves, we all agreed on that one. I suggested taking a bus and we were glad to find out there was a night bus 30 minutes later. It was freezing, so we decided to have a drink in the meantime. Unfortunately, every bar in the neighbourhood seemed to be closed. Alternatively, we spent half an hour sitting on the floor of a KBC bank office. When we got back to the bus stop we found out there were only night busses during the weekend, so we had been waiting for nothing.
And so we decided to stop being greedy and just took a taxi. Ah well. The next morning we found out there was a third entrance to the parking. Sigh.
Gerlin and Hermine, flyering like they've never done anything else. The Excerts, the not-so-very-good support act (the guys seemed nice enough, though). In the first picture of them, they're joined on drums by Steven from Blood Red Shoes.
Blood Red Shoes!
Karolien and a new boyfriend :)
Laura-Mary (BRS), Elke, Karolien, me, Steven (BRS)
our famous 30 minutes in the KBC bank, from moderate contenment to complete dispair
Thursday, I've been spending practically all day in Brussels. I met up with Katrijn to do some shopping (I bought myself a dark blue bat sleeve blouse and a lovely pair of black suede and very high heeled shoes, Katrijn went home with a new party outfit and two pairs of gorgeous red shoes which she bought for no money) and in the evening I went to the Botanique, where I was going to watch Infadels play in the Orangerie.
Apparantly Bell X1 - an Irish band which I've already seen twice, supporting The Frames and a couple of months later Damien Rice - was doing a gig in one of the other venues, which made me a bit sad of course. But I comforted myself by treating me to a piece of their merchandising catalogue - a great live cd/dvd.
Before the gig, I met Infadels in their dressing rooms. I was doing an interview for Indiestyle with Richie Vernon (keyboard player) and Matt Gooderson (guitars), which turned out to be a great experience. I'm pretty positive that these two guys must be the nicest interviewees I've had so far. It was kind of difficult to stay focused, though, considering the fact that Richie was already wearing his stage make-up (see pictures below) whilst talking about less funny things like being ripped off by their tour manager. But really, they were absolutely great - friendly, witty and not looking the slightest bit annoyed.
The same greatness was to be found in their gig. I missed out on them at Pukkelpop (good excuse, though: Carlos Barât), but I never want to miss out on them ever again when they come back to Belgium. It was one hell of a party, from the first note to the last one.
If you know Dutch, feel free to read my review on Digg*: http://www.digg.be/gigs.php?id=446 The interview will be up on Indiestyle one of the next days.
Here's some pictures:
Talking about reviews, here's what I wrote about my beloved Paul Weller's gig the night before I went to London: http://www.digg.be/gigs.php?id=445
Starsailor was pretty amazing as well. They sound a lot live like they do on their albums, which is usually a thing I don't like that much, because you go to gigs to get something slightly different from what you already have on a compact disc. I didn't mind it with Starsailor though, because James Walsh seemed so passionated whilst singing. It's hard to believe that a band with so much love for what they do is going to split (at least for a while). 
