a dEUS tour diary

MP3: dEUS - Slow & The Architect - Doornroosje, Nijmegen, 08.04.2008

Yesterday I went to Nijmegen with my friend Laurent, whom I met a few years ago through the dEUS forum. We meant to attend the rehearsal, but couldn’t get inside the building, and since the weather was so nice we went for a walk in the city. A bit of a let-down: while the photos on the Nijmegen websites make it look like a gorgeous town, only a fraction of the medieval centre survided the second World War. I read on Wikipedia that Nijmegen was bombed flat by… the American air force, who thought they were bombing the German city of Kleve. The stupidity of war… oh God. Still, by the river there’s a lovely hilly little park with medieval ruins and the loveliest pedestrian bridge.

Some 15-minute walking from downtown Nijmegen, Doornroosje (in English Sleeping beauty) started as a hippie cultural centre in the 70’s. Not surprising then that it looks like a big and very, very colourful house (and I’m only showing you the back of the building). From wall to wall it’s covered in street paintings, even the doors are painted, and there are signs asking all the aspiring Basquiats not to paint over the windows.

Belgian band The Blackbox Revelation opened the evening. They’re a pair of skilled musicians, especially considering their age, and what they do they do well — but overall, I felt like I was listening to your average 70’s rock band. The poor man’s Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Not bad, just déjà-vu.

Half an hour later dEUS entered the stage. They started with When She Comes Down, sounding better than in Breda, and followed with Oh Your God, with Stéphane in top drumming shape. Sun Ra followed: what a start! The Lisa-less version of Eternal Woman was fine, but already Tom’s stage feedback was marred by technical problems, and that would go on until the end of the concert, making him visibly very upset (he looked outright sombre during Instant Street, shouting angrily in French at his roadies). If he’d known that his voice and guitars sounded just fine heard from the audience, maybe he’d have relaxed a little and have given his fans a little more attention… The other guys didn’t seem to suffer from any such annoyance.

I was happy to hear that they used their 2-day break to sort out Slow. Tom’s little piano was clearly audible, and Mauro took over Klaas’s violin screeches with his guitar, and the song worked much, much better that way. I still wish they’d use a recording of Karin Dreijer’s vocals when they perform it, since her singing is a big part of what makes Slow such a wonderful piece to me. They did The Architect afterwards — yeah, the setlist is getting quite similar to Sunday’s — and Fell Off The Floor, Man to follow. I really like Klaas’s distorted violin intro on Favourite Game, and if I manage to get over the way Tom sings the “Rest your eyes…” part, I’ll end up loving that song.

Smokers Reflect came after that, definitely one of my favourite Vantage Point moments. It’s got a simple and folksy melody, but I’m in love with it. The band plays a surprising, Indian-psychedelic-sounding intro on that one. The mood remained a quiet one with Nothing Really Ends, again with that vibraphone-less intro, with the noisy ending fading, as in Breda, into Bad Timing, but with Tom kneeling in front of his amp for a minute of Fender feedback — can’t remember when I last saw him do that. Is A Robot was next, and that song only truly comes to its own live. It’s much longer than on the album, with a weird break of drums and spacey synth sounds. My favourite new song so far on the tour. The first part of the concert ended with Pocket Rev and Roses (which seemed very short to me).

They came back with The Vanishing of Maria Schneider, again with great backing vocals by Stéphane — he is this tour’s new star. I’m not sure Maria is quite ready yet for the stage: as much as I love it on the album, I feel something is missing when they play it. They played What We Talk About and then Turnpike (I think they messed it up - the loud trumpet & cymbals crash never came and the guitars/haha’s ending wasn’t spot-on). But Popular Culture was great, so that the concert ended on a positive note — which didn’t stop Tom from leaving the stage after saying “Thank you - you’ve been very tolerant”.

On the whole, I liked this concert more than Sunday’s. Most of the new songs sounded better, and the crowd was more into it (or at least, where I was standing). I have no idea what was happening to Tom’s guitars/amps/whatever, but he was definitely not having fun, even though I couldn’t hear anything wrong. The result was that he hardly interacted with the crowd, and if I wasn’t going to see dEUS half a dozen times again on this tour, and knew that this was only the result of technical problems behind the band’s control, I would probably have been disappointed, even if the rest of the band was much more into it.

By the way, the Vantage Point merchandise is now available during concerts. Unfortunately, the shirts don’t feature Michaël Borremans’s beautiful drawings, probably for a reason of copyright. They sport the “dEUS - Vantage Point” writing seen on the album cover. They’re made by “Marcel de Bruxelles”, a fashion company apparently famous for their tank-tops (in French, Marcel is a name, but it’s also a familiar noun for a tank-top). As expected, I couldn’t get inside any of the XL merchandise, but I can tell you one thing: Klaas Janzoons in a tight “girlie” Vantage Point shirt is a glorious sight.

Setlist:

1. When She Comes Down
2. Oh Your God
3. Sun Ra
4. Eternal Woman
5. Instant Street
6. Slow
7. The Architect
8. Fell Off The Floor, Man
9. Favourite Game
10. Smokers Reflect
11. Nothing Really Ends
12. Bad Timing
13. Is A Robot
14. Pocket Revolution
15. Roses
    —-
16. The Vanishing of Maria Schneider
17. What We Talk About (When We Talk About Love)
18. Theme From Turnpike
19. Popular Culture

You can also discuss this gig on the dEUS forum….

MP3: dEUS - Oh Your God - Mezz, Breda, 06.04.2008

I’m pissed. First, I lost my phone at a (great) party on Saturday, so I couldn’t post anything live to Twitter, as I’d expected. Second, I apparently lost my camera after the gig. Which means that a lot of Mauro action shots are lost forever (a friend of mine was taking pictures of him all the time, her new goal in life is to become Florence Pawlowski). Third, I wrote a first draft of the Breda gig yesterday when I came back home, and for some reason it’s lost. And now it’s Monday… Eeew. Anyway.

I arrived in Breda a little before 18:00, 1h30 later than what I’d planned, effectively ruining my bourgeois “koopzondag” plans. I parked right in front of Mezz, where dEUS were rehearsing Slow behind closed doors. After exchanging my internet code for the paper tickets, my friends and I went walking around the city - a lovely, clean town full of shops, bars & restaurants: your typical mid-sized Dutch town. We ate waaay too much at Popocatepetl, a great Mexican restaurant, then it was time to head back to the great Mezz (small, intimate, great sound, bar at the back of the room - what else could you ask for?). The first thing I noticed there was a huge (ca. 1 m²) canvas with the cover art of Vantage Point: if you pre-ordered your copy of the album from Breda’s Velvet Music record store, you would receive a promo copy of the Slow single (there was a whole stack of them) and have a chance of winning that signed canvas! Nice.

So, what’s to say about the Vantage Point try-out concert? A lot of positive things, actually. Perhaps the thing that struck me most, early during the gig, is how cohesive that band has become. The group dynamic is obvious - you can’t say it’s “Tom Barman & Band” anymore. Mauro’s role is much more prominent, not only on The Architect but on other songs as well, and all members sing a lot more than ever before. Stephane’s performance in particular was noticeable: he sung Karin Dreijer’s part on Slow and Guy Garvey’s on The Vanishing of Maria Schneider - and it didn’t feel wrong. On the whole, that’s a great evolution, pushing dEUS in new directions instead of trying to recreate things they did in the 90’s. Then, there’s Alan. His bass groove is huge, and it’s a pivotal instrument in many of the new songs - Slow, obviously, but also the great Is A Robot, and on Smokers Reflect as well. Plus, he’s got perfect teeth, which is a dramatic improvement over his predecessor As for Tank-Top General Klaas, I was surprised to find out that he’s using the violin in almost every new song, but in ways that make it hard to recognize: playing a little strummed riff on The Vanishing, pizzicating a lot, driving it through a massive distorsion on The Architect…

Overall, the new songs worked great, apart from Slow, where Klaas probably had a lot to do: he launches a sample, plays the piano parts by strumming the notes on his violin, then he loops them, plays some violin screeches, some keyboard notes… He looked a bit overwhelmed, actually. Hopefully they’ll sort it out as the tour progresses. They kicked off with When She Comes Down, already one of my Vantage Point favourites. Watch Tom opening his arms wide as he sort of raps through the verses… Oh Your God is, as expected, an ideal song for the live setting. Stephane’s drumming rocks. And Favourite Game is quite nice on stage… especially the last part - I still have trouble with the “Rest your eyes / Got no tears for love songs” part, which grates my ears. Then came Instant Street, greeted with a massive cheer, which certainly helped relieve Tom’s apparent stress. Oh the climax, oh the love. Louder, louder…

For Eternal Woman, Tom welcomed Mintzkov’s Lies Lorquet on stage - she’s doing that song’s female vocals on the album. She’s got a lovely voice, but she acted a bit shy… Well, I suppose I’d be slightly impressed as well Then came Slow (see above), and The Architect, with Tom hitting an electronic drumkit (and putting his drumstick in his pants - look, Tom has a woody), definitely one of the highlights of the concert. That song was written for the stage, it’s got such an infectious rhythm and it’s fantastic to see Tom & Mauro playing ping-pong with the lyrics. Sun Ra sounded as scorching as ever, and then came another Vantage Point song, Smokers Reflect, an instantly lovable folksy ballad with a catchy “You shouldn’t be, you shouldn’t be doing this” chorus.

Nothing Really Ends had a new guitar intro (but don’t worry, the song’s beauty remains untouched), and during its noisy ending it faded into Bad Timing, like the band often did during the previous tour. It sounded a bit fucked up at times, but then, it’s not the easiest song to play in the dEUS repertoire. I love it when Alan’s bass kicks in, anyway. They followed with Is A Robot, a great dEUS song with a lot of things going on, the kind that sounds like they’ve tried to cram a whole album into a 5-minute song, and then Pocket Revolution, with Stephane doing some rolling percussions, and an extended “I keep control” outro. The last song before the encore was Roses, during which Tom’s blue guitar (guitar techies, forgive me) got some apparently much-needed roadie attention.

The encore was great, starting with The Vanishing, another VP highlight, which reminded me of an Elbow song, and not just because Elbow’s singer is present on the album version. It sounds more classic Elbow than classic dEUS (not complaining: Elbow is one of the greatest bands around). They did What We Talk About, which sounds a zillion times better live than on the album, followed by a short but powerful Fell Off The Floor, Man (that’s unfair competition for What We Talk, really). They played a great version of Theme From Turnpike (you’ll get a video of that later, if my camera reappears), and ended the gig with Vantage Point closer Popular Culture, their most anthemic song to date. It’s an unambiguously folk song and it could very well become a sing-along fan favourite, because it just feels so good and lovely. Don’t argue - you don’t wanna be late in popular culture, do you?

All in all, a very pleasant try-out gig. The setlist was mostly a Vantage Point/Pocket Revolution affair, but that was to be expected, since they needed to test all their new songs (in the album order, mostly), and PR was the first album with the current line-up. The biggest disappointment to many was probably the absence of songs from Worst Case Scenario, but I’m sure we’ll hear a few of them during the tour. Not to worry.

After the show, I chatted for 16 seconds with Mauro, who’s planning to release 4 records this year under various guises, without any fanfare, as usual. I got my own private Somnabula moment when he made a very cute vampire grimace. And I went home with a copy of Vantage Point, so I can finally hear the album and annoy my boyfriend and neighbours for months to come by hitting repeat forever.

Actual setlist:

When She Comes Down
Oh Your God
Favourite Game
Instant Street
Eternal Woman (featuring Lies Lorquet)
Slow
The Architect
Sun Ra
Smokers Reflect
Nothing Really Ends
Bad Timing
Is A Robot
Pocket Revolution
Roses

The Vanishing Of Maria Schneider
What We Talk About (When We Talk About Love)
Fell Off The Floor, Man
Theme From Turnpike
Popular Culture

Discuss this concert on the forum

… and I wouldn’t want to miss that, obviously. dEUS are going to kick off their 2008 tour at Mezz in Breda, just like they did in 2004. I’ll post some live impressions to my Twitter account, and later on some photos and MP3’s on this blog (I don’t have a very versatile phone yet).

The wait is over

Brussels-London: 2×370km on the Eurostar

… except this time, I didn’t go just to see dEUS (as opposed to this gig). I actually had a long, 4-day weekend ahead, and the concert was a perfect excuse for another trip to London. I travelled with a friend from Brussels, at whose friends’s place I’d be staying. Free accomodation! Weeeee! Left the office, went straight to the station, onto the Eurostar, London Waterloo at 18.27, Northern Line to Kentish Town, I head straight to the Forum, and in front of a pub, I almost bump into Alan. Haha. Celestial coincidence: inside the pub and looking out, there’s Erin, that cool fan from Vancouver whom I met last year in Glasgow and who studies in Edinburgh. Actually, it ain’t that much of a coincidence - just meeting her right at the same time as Alan is the only coincidence there, as I am largely to blame for talking Erin into coming down to London for the gig. But you don’t care much about that anyway, you don’t even know the girl. But erh… she’s part of this story. Most definitely so. (Erin, you may want to stop reading now.)

Alan was having a sore throat, and he asked us if we knew where to find a chemist’s. Right, Alan. I’m from Brussels. Erin’s from Vancouver. Of course we know all about pharmacies in North London. Rock stars are fun like that.

(For some reason, I never finished that post. Suffice to say the band rocked out, but to an uninterested and rather sparse crowd, then Snow Patrol came on stage and the crowd went wild — a very young crowd — and afterwards there was some intense Barman-groupie-snogging at the bar)