April 17th, 2012 Boy and Bear – Roter Salon
April 23rd, 2012
Manel – Lido
May 2nd, 2012
Foster the People – Columbiahalle
Like any well rounded
person, I try to include a variety of cultural offerings and the previous three
weeks were no exception. Within the boundaries of Berlin I heard a band from
Australia, Cataluña and Los Angeles. Let’s begin
Boy and Bear – okay the
Roter Salon is a lovely venue and reminded me of San Francisco places like the
Great American Music Hall and the Regency Ballroom. Off to the side of
Volksbuhne, it had decent acoustics and that small, living room feel that makes
for a great indie show. The crowd was about 99% Aussie, and so therefore loudly
drunk. I didn’t realize I knew this band (Bronwen invited me and I excepted on
the “free ticket” premise) until they played “Mexican Mavis” with was featured
on the SXSW 2011 sampler which you can download on itunes. Let’s call them very very Fleet Foxish. They are also a non-encore band, who
just announces they don’t do encores and play another song without leaving the
stage. Lead singer told the story of people waiting around for ages at their
last show waiting for an encore and he felt bad…well obviously not bad enough
to play a few more songs! I thought it was old when the Supersuckers did that.
Manel – Heard about this
band from an Andalusian coworker, who sent me these links to entice me, note
the awesome Pulp cover. And also,
he told me “Estos chicos cantan en Catalan, pero son majos! Yo tampoco los entiendo!!”
so off to see a Catalan band that I most certainly won't understand. Now Lido was packed with more Spaniards per
square meter than I’ve ever seen in Berlin, and I’ve been to Gorlitzer Park on
a Sunday. What impressed me most was the mandolin and (no shit)
an oboe incorporated into their version of melodic folk pop. Reminds me a bit of my favorite
bit of 70s psych folk, Secos e Molhados.
Not-annoyingly-earnest vocals backed by sweeping melodies and solid
musicianship.
Foster the People – At the
pinnacle of my recent show experiences. Now I was pretty bummed when they moved
it from Astra Kulturhaus (leaky concrete box) to Columbiahalle (sweaty concrete
box with crap acoustics). Now about fifty critics described their album Torches
as the soundtrack to summer…but it is! Beautifully danceable electro-pop with
catchy-as-hell lyrics. but the band live, oh live… the frontman, Mark Foster,
has that break dancing, all over the sweaty stage charisma that makes live
shows 10 million times better than listening on your ipod. The most touching moment was when he
brought a brace-eted skinny teen girl on stage, who was brandishing a sign that
said “We love Mark!” (there are two in the band). He asked her how many people
she was with, and brought her 3 girlfriends and one guy friend onto the stage too. He asked the to stay on stage and dance
with them to this song, and she just kept mouthing “Ohmygod!” while awkwardly
keeping time. I’m sure it was the highlight of her 13th year, just
as pogoing crazily to “Call It What You Want” was the highlight of my May.