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.

Best Concerts of Sziget 2015: #6 MØ

Speaking of reviews that blow your fuse, the other day I accidentally bumped into one which had the exquisite talent of calling MØ Diplo’s little protegee, thus graciously wiping out the existence of a sea of fabulous music that existed before MØ kindly agreed to make Diplo’s endeavours marginally interesting, if only for the length of a song. (Here I also insert a small rant where I growl about how Diplo doesn’t get to be called M.I.A.’s little protege, on account of his having a Y chromosome as opposed to her two Xs).

It was of course one of those 'I want to say everything about Sziget in twenty sentences' pieces which we all know will never work, but I still find it completely off the mark to judge MØ, or any artist for that matter, based on a guest performance. For the thing is, each and every song on her debut album, No Mythologies to Follow, is a better one than Lean On and very many established artists should envy the confidence with which the young Dane delivers her music. Looking at her immediately connecting with the audience and transporting them to the world of her tunes is electrifying and makes it look very easy- when of course it is anything but that.

Nothing about her music is little- and we can only hope that even bigger things lie ahead of her. And if you’ve heard Lean On one time too many for the comfort of your soul and want to feel really pristine and cool again, try playing MØ’s collaboration with Elliphant- One More. Unfortunately we cannot get one more of MØs concerts in the near future (and I was stupid enough to miss last year’s A38 boat concert), but you can always check out Elliphant in Akvárium on September 24th.

Best Concerts of Sziget 2015: #8 Passenger and #7 Florence and the Machine

As I had already confessed in one of my pre-Sziget line up round ups, Passenger for me kept being the guy with that intensively radio friendly song. And before we blow things out of proportion: intensively radio friendly is not a derogatory term at all, it simply denominates a very catch tune I very much like. Apparently there is another very catchy song with a very similar title- namely Let It Be from the sound track of Frozen and it ruined poor Passenger’s life as people kept confusing them. If it offers any solace to Mike, Let It Be is intensively hateful as far as I am concerned and cannot be mentioned on the same day as the lovely Let Her Go.

Putting such technicalities aside I now again come to the point where I am running for my life from the claws of Martin Garrix’s vile onslaught of boring and annoying machine music. And get to Passenger’s tent and have faith in humanity restored. If there’s any gimmick to his show it’s that there aren’t any. He comes with a guitar, he plays great tunes, he even does good covers. (This being one important take away of this year’s Sziget- not everyone can cover songs graciously, and we should cherish those who do.) He links his songs with little introductory bits that are genuinely engaging and funny, something not all musicians can and/or want to do- won’t elaborate on the Death Star pun here, as it was already mentioned in the daily review, but that was one of those things that will etch the memory of this concert in my mind as a Sziget classic.

I now have to confess I often read bad reviews of concerts I liked just to pump up my adrenaline levels by getting worked up over pretty much nothing. So here it goes, to the guy who said Passenger was boring, you my friend have no soul left, because Avicii and the Garrix person burned it out of you with lasers and musical mediocrity, and are therefore utterly and irreversibly hopeless.

Now, I liked Florence and the Machine, I liked them a lot, I even sacrificed the superb insanity of a Future Islands concert so I could watch the entire show, because it was riveting and never lost my attention. I also thoroughly support the idea of many more female fronted, or why not all female, headliners. There was however something that kept on nagging at the back of my mind throughout, not quite taking a coherent shape. There was something slightly off with the performance, I just couldn’t put in into words.

As we have learned from any detective novel that’s at least half decent, such case solving illuminations always come when you least expect them, so the idea struck me in the dead of night, while pondering going out to the kitchen for a little something: her show is simply too structured for the outpour of emotion she would like to convey with it. You should not really plan emotion, but she does- it’s not that it isn’t really there, it’s just that it has, well, a machine built around it, that functions like clockwork ginger. It’s a bit like the flower wreaths she keeps popping on and off her head: pretty but ultimately plastic.

It is of course completely clear to me that the quirky Florence of Lungs could hardly have fronted the main stage, either on Sziget or at Glastonbury, so here comes the revolutionary observation of how one needs to make some compromises on the road to superstardom.  So the thing is, I somehow did not want her to become a superstar- yet I am somehow glad she did.

Best Concerts of Sziget 2015 #9: The Horrors

The post may as well begin with another gooey confession, namely that I love The Horrors. I didn’t always love them, mind you, their first album was musically pretty much off my radar, and I had a good chuckle or two over their gothic meets geometry outfits. Whatever then happened to them around their second album was actually nothing short of a miracle- out go the short angry punkish yelps,  in come long shoegaze anthems. Of course they’re not really a shoegaze band, and they don’ completely fit other genres either- and it’s exactly this borderline nature of their music that makes me love them.

So I was very prepared to give them the top spot just as I did last time they played on Sziget- when their afternoon set was as flawless as the ridiculous timing allowed it to be. Only this time it didn’t quite work out as expected- maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the crowd still on a come down after a decidedly different type of performance by Gogol Bordello, maybe it was Faris having one of those days we all have. For the first songs something didn’t quite click and the band seemed very aware of it, being more jittery than usual with Faris’, ahem, dancing taking on a decidedly dervish prey to the hives nature. 

They did however make it back on track and there were a couple of songs in there that made me grin with delight, now then, this IS The Horrors.  And the end, well, it was special in a very horrors-y way: Faris took a jump into the crowd, which was alternatively interpreted as a bungled stage dive attempt or simply his way of signing out from a performance that probably didn’t satisfy him all that much. Either way, he just left into the sweltering early evening heat only to be later spotted at various venues around the island.

But before signing of in an abrupt fashion as well, we must make it clear that this wasn’t a bad performance by the usual standards, it’s just that we set the bar so high for The Horrors that occasionally the only way out is a dive under it. 

Best Concerts of Sziget 2015 #10: José González and Kings of Leon

This has been a strange Sziget concert wise- while in other years there was always one, maybe two, concerts which were clearly above the rest of the field, this year I just could not make up my mind, no matter how hard I tried. So the top five is basically random, each one of those performances could have claimed the first spot based on certain criteria, but might have fallen behind on others. And since I got stuck with eleven names as well, the last spot is a shared one.

So number ten goes to the odd couple of José González and the Kings of Leon. Though if I come to think of it, they do share the common denominator of playing music that is not necessarily classical festival material.

One might of course object that the Kings of Leon for one have headlined many major festivals and pulled off huge arena shows, but for me their music is teetering too much on the edge of different genres to have the kind of staunch and cohesive following which makes truly explosive festival headliners. The most frequent negative remark I heard about their set is that is was boring- many of today’s festival goes expect the headliners to rumble on like asteroids from him to hit, and up the notch of frenzy with each song. This is one of the reasons why (below) average DJs spinning everyone else’s overplayed smash hits get to be the main act of the night on Sziget and might be one of the reasons why Robbie Williams chose to pepper his set with so many covers.

If you don’t please the hyper active crowd with a strong impulse at least once a minute, they will start fidgeting with their phones, selfie stick and beer cans. The fact that after armies of knob turners and song samplers a band was finally playing brilliant live music was lost on many. For that’s what the Kings of Leon did: from the first chord to the last, they played good music and played it well.

That not all their songs are Sex is on Fire is something anyone who has listened to any of their albums at least once will know, and should decide on watching the show or not accordingly. Somewhere on the island there was a knob turner they might very well have chosen instead. It’s also quite true that the last couple of Kings of Leon albums might have been a bit bland compared to Only by the Night, but then again, that one is so exquisite that many things will become bland when compared to it.

José González is definitely able to prove that you don’t have to run around the stage like a manic squirrel looking for a lost nut to be thoroughly enjoyable- and during a week of frantic activities there is nothing wrong with going to a concert where lots of people sit down. Not because they’re bored or tired, but because there is a special pleasure in getting lost in the music a bit, which is better done seated, lest you fall over a sleeping Dutchman in your reverie. (The Dutchman for his part could have, and probably did sleep through Martin Garrix as well.) (If you don’t know who Martin Garrix is, you’re fortunate and do not, I repeat, do not google him.)