Best Concerts of Sziget 2015: #1 Interpol

The other day I was reading a couple of reviews of the much awaited Benedict Cumberbatch does Hamlet project, and one of them ran the totally unexpected title of "Benedict is a bloody good Hamlet says his mum".  My placing Interpol as the best concert of Sziget probably looks like a similarly objective and factual decision, though luckily for us both I’m not Paul Banks’ mum.

I actually thought long and hard before going for Interpol at one (yes, the trouble some of us have), but sometimes the easy way out is simply the best way out as well. This was most probably not a stellar Interpol performance- even more probably stellar Interpol performances are slightly different from classic stellar performances, and absolutely definitely no festival will ever quite suit the band’s glossy gloom. Interpol songs are rainy autumn days spent in your impeccably cut dinner jacket poring over the paper and nursing a glass of whiskey in some smoky bar.

Which, no matter how we look at it, is a pretty far cry from an excruciatingly hot tent filled to the brim with slightly drunk people looking for a beer or three. Given these elements, the whole endeavour could have probably gone two ways: Interpol try to adapt to the tent, and become moderately chummy and likable, or Interpol pretend they’re in the gloomy bar and keep on being tantalizingly Interpol. They mercifully went for the second, and that’s why it worked. As I already said, it didn’t work quite perfectly, but in a festival of exciting yet often uneven performances this one seemed to be the most self assured and I shall thus propel it to number one with a clear conscience.

Just as I dismissed people who claimed Kings of Leon were boring based on their expecting all of the songs to be Sex is on Fire (and a dance remix of it, if possible, Avicii style), I will also dismiss everyone who complained about Interpol being uncommunicative and cold. That’s how they are supposed to be, for the love of all that is holy. It was exactly the coldness and confidence that seemed to be lacking from their previous Sziget show- and this time it was there and it felt like a relief. Every now and then Paul Banks would grin, like someone satisfied with a job well done: this is us, this is what we do, we look like we don’t care, maybe be actually don’t, but we sound like a dream. And our job is to sound like a dream. And there’s nothing more wonderful than a band being truly and wholly themselves even when expected not to. 

Best Concerts of Sziget 2015: #2 Foals

There's always one concert on every Sziget that doesn't immediately feel great for any number of absurd reasons. Like you have a cramp in your left toe, the crowd around you is fidgetier than an anthill, the bottom left stage reflector is pointed straight at your over sensitive retina, and the list can go on forever. All these nuisances don't actually stop you from enjoying the music, because the concert we're talking about, as already pointed out, is actually good enough to absorb you, it's just that straight at the end you will focus on whatever tragedy befell you and won't have the peace of mind to ponder the more important stuff.

Given that some time has passed, I now cannot actually remember what pissed me off during the Foals concert.Something surely did, for I was quite a bit grumpy about the whole thing until about the next day around noon, when the epiphany of just how colossally good the last three songs were sank in. It's of course not only those three songs that place Foals at number two overall, but on the strength of that encore alone they would have probably made it to top five anyway. An encore is a slightly dubious thing at festivals, where bands don't always have enough time to really build it up and make it work and some don't bother with it at all. With Foals however I had the impression they kept revving the engines, like a jet ready for take off on the runway, and then blasted off to the skies at the end. 

The revving up part was not without glitches, as the sound system actually went bust on them halfway through Mountain at My Gates, which was a more subdued affair anyways, being a new and relatively unknown track. As a side note, if you want to lose all your indie smart credentials and be ostracized from a group of hip friends, loudly ask during a Foals concert when will Cassius be played. Never is the correct answer, Cassius is one of those things the band picked a fight with, like Enter Shikari, David Guetta and random security personnel. It's quite telling of the band's dynamic that they will feel so strongly about one of their songs (a pretty good one, at that)- a somewhat indefinite simmering tension has always played an important part in their appeal. 

The concert moved in the same realm: there was anger, energy, tension, the rawness and immediacy that justifies the existence of live performances in the first place. There might have been slips here and there, and maybe an ideal Foals show would look a degree more cohesive than this, but overall it was made of that addictive stuff that keeps you going to concerts. The cleverly crafted artifacts from the record suddenly coming to life. 

Best Concerts of Sziget 2015: #3 Fauve

I know how it feels. There goes the hipster getting excited about an obscure band from an obscure land singing in an obscure language. No offence to the French, but in the world of music it’s English and the obscure. French music has however always been my very kind of obscure, since yes, it does definitely help if you understand the lyrics and I do therefore dig around the dark corners of the French speaking Internet for the newest acts of interest. It was during such an endeavour that a couple of years back I chanced upon Fauve, who at that point had a handful of songs just beginning to go viral.

Since I usually take hypes with a pinch of salt, I can’t say I expected all that much and had a list of other names prepared as well for further listening. But the only further listening of the night was Fauve’s Blizzard in a near continuous loop. As I kept listening, it dawned on me that this band has the kind of rawness and honesty of intent that would probably sound quite magnetic live, and I imagined delayed Air France flights, ridiculously priced hotels with tiny rooms and the nightmare of evening commutes, the whole package, just to make it to one of their gigs.

But you don’t need to do all that if you have one of Europe’s most diverse festivals right next door- this spring I was totally elated to see Fauve would be coming to Sziget, and they seemed pretty elated too once they made it here. They keep insisting that a lot of what they do is accidental,  and their concert had that quality of the most beautiful of accidents: we just happened to all be in that tent on a hot Sunday evening, band, a few smaller French regions and the odd non-French wandering in for reasons unknown. Yes, we had Belgians too. A lot of Belgians.

So we were there, and there was this odd energy in the air, that makes you forget about your troubles a bit, and just become one with a song, a moment, and the people around you. There’s this one particular tune, that was played during the night, and that sums up the Fauve experience quite well: the French title Haut les coeurs, sounds so poetic, and literally means up with the hearts, but gets translated into the rather more mundane English 'chin up'. It’s a song about how life can feel and is actually so scary, but we must hang on to special moments and the prospect of great stories still ahead of us. It’s not a song with a big life affirming chorus, it’s a song of small statements of hope. And sometimes small hope is the biggest of consolations. 

Best Concerts of Sziget 2015: #4 Kasabian

Anyone who knows me and has at least partial access to my dementia has probably been bored stiff by the story of how I saw Kasabian in Pecsa with a handful of people back when they were considerably less known in this part of the world. I do totally confess to being guilty as charged, but concert lovers will probably acknowledge the fact that we all have definitive experiences that were pivotal in forming our tastes and habits. And that Kasabian concert is one of those experiences for me.

I remember being quite upset about the low turnout, after all, I had just read in NME that these guys are already playing to crowds of over 20 000 people. They’ll just take a look at our scarce numbers and decide we’re really not worth their effort. Only we were, and as they thundered through an amazing set as if they had, well, a very, very fast fuse, I learned that a good band will work wonders from clubs to giant arenas.

There was of course a decidedly more encouraging presence in front of Sziget’s main stage, yet I will moan again (last time, I promise) about how they should have been the headliners. No questions asked, headliners. Send Avicii to the world music stage as traditional Swedish music for when you’re assembling IKEA furniture and want to blank your mind of all other articulate thinking.  Send him to the circus tent as clown in residence. Send him to the beach to short circuit his damn turntable. Just do something to have Kasabian as headliners because Sziget owes them that much.

(Rummaging through Kasabian’s summer performances for an idea of how their setlist evolves, I found them being co-headliners at V festival alongside Calvin Harris. Our knob fidgeter from last year. In an odd, but somehow satisfying way we’ll slowly get to see UK festivals being so yesterday compared to Sziget.)

I realize I have been off track for quite a while, a bit like Tom Meighan going for a T-shirt change when Sziget gets too tropical for him. Back to our own sheep, as the French would say, or more precisely our own bumblebees. Darned seven thirty slot aside, Kasabian came, played, and conquered, as they were bound to. They are a band who now have enough strong songs to fuel a stratospheric set anytime and they know it. Yes, they are smug, yes, they like some posing and posturing, yes, they like going about with that rock star attitude. Thing is, unlike some artists who had (dis)graced the main stage earlier in the week, it suits them. 

Best Concerts of Sziget 2015: #5 Gogol Bordello

It would be very easy for Gogol Bordello to fall into that category of world music acts that become completely satisfied with their portion of the scene and deliver the same concert every year for decades or so. Yet I am at the fifth show in about eight years and I can safely say none of them were the same. 

The basic recipe will of course never change, it doesn’t even have to, but you must always keep it interesting by giving it a twist. Each time I saw him, Eugene Hutz was busying himself thieving inspiration from different sources, taking the stay on the run motto very seriously for a man who wouldn’t strike you as particularly serious at a first glance. As already mentioned, there’s a strong vein of statically wallowing in self pity lodged into Eastern Europeans, so it’s always a relief to see its easy going solar opposite in action. 

There’s never been any doubt that Gogol Bordello are as much of a wandering circus of some sorts as they are a rock band, and their beauty lies in the very fact that they’re great at delivering both. The crowd goes manic in the afternoon heat about halfway through the first song and only takes small respites when Eugene walks through the sprinkler system, bottle in hand, like some ancient deity dispensing rain and wine. 

Midway through the show a hapless individual walks in and asks his slightly less hapless friend where these people are from. Well, the programme says US, but you know, they’re not really from there, they’re like from everywhere a bit. Strange enough, but that’s probably the best definition of them I ever heard- being from everywhere a bit makes you exponentially more fun than being from somewhere precise, and that’s exactly the feeling you get whenever you go to a Gogol Bordello concert.

PS: The man sang in Hungarian. Two full songs. With mostly discernible accent. This feat of greatness immediately demands a giant statue overlooking the Danube or something.