Christopher and more, Nibe Festival Day 2

Sunny and rather windy, 19 degrees and rising… Day 2 of Nibe Festival in Northern Jutland of Denmark was the well-known mixture of local and upcoming acts, famous groups, strong hits, and a little Australian flavour.

Christopher

‘If you have nothing to die for, what are you even alive for?’ The Danish singer and entertainer Christopher had one life and career before the Netflix movie “A Beautiful Life” from 2023, and a completely different one afterwards.

Thanks to his songs (and his role as the fisherman Elliot), he is now more famous than ever before, and he is busy travelling around the globe. But his pleasant, rather loose attitude is still the same. Perfectly shaped pop songs, loaded with very high sing-along quality, and always riding along on a steady, going pulse of rather tough rock’n roll and bouncy funk.

Christopher is a great entertainer, well aware of himself, but also with a nice, somewhat ironic look at himself. Why else keep the quirky and funny “First Like” on the setlist, based as it is on a lot of awkward text messages about how he is acting and looking? With Christopher on the stage, singing and almost constant dancing, there is never a dull moment. The audience is activated all the time. And in good hands. All the way.

Anne Linnet

Anne Linnet has been singing and writing songs since the 70’s. She is now 71 years old and is still rather famous – although not quite so much as in the late 80’s and the beginning of the 90’s, when she was very adored, first and foremost for the hymn-like song “Tusind stykker” (“Thousand pieces”) about the condition of a broken heart.

Her concert at Nibe Festival was a loud, rather tough (at times just a bit brutal) garage rock version of some of her greatest hits from a very long career, with and without the edgy funk band Marquis de Sade. Quite a lot of her songs from at least four decades are still able to spark a fire, although the concert tended to be just a little bit too monotonous. 

But songs like “Den jeg elsker” (“The One I Love”) and “Barndommens gade” (“Street of my Childhood”) can still make the audience sing and yell. Not to mention “Glor på vinduer” (“Looking at windows”), played with the energy of a sledgehammer. And yes, the one about the thousand pieces was the last song, still presented with great pride with a now quite darker and somewhat worn-out voice.

Dean Lewis

For obvious reasons, quite a lot of Danes have fallen for songs by the Australian singer-songwriter Dean Lewis, just like many Danes are fond of James Blunt. Dean and Blunt have more or less the same folksy approach to their rather soft and tender ballad style. And for at least some Danes, Dean Lewis might sound a bit like their own song hero, Lukas Graham (famous for “Seven Years”).

So it looked like an experiment playing soft ballads on the biggest stage on a sunny Thursday afternoon. But Dean Lewis made it. His recorded songs are very soft. On stage, he and his band have a harder attitude. More rocky. More direct. And Lewis is charming, clearly thankful for the attention and very keen on using each and every trick in the playbook to keep a restless audience activated.

Among the highlights were tight versions of the touching “How Do I Say Goodbye”, “Half A Man” and “Be Alright”, but a bit too many of the other songs are too similar and volatile.  You are entertained, as long as Dean Lewis is on the stage, but the concert had a touch of the rather forgettable. A nice experience, but not enough for an hour of entertainment.

Jung

‘Blitz, baby, blitz, baby’… The Danish synthpop band Jung is still on a “mission impossible” trying to create something as strong as its No. 1 hit. Singer-songwriter Jonas Jung Larsen and his friends are almost there, thanks to “Forfra forbundet” (“Connected From the Front”) og “Hun kommer tilbage” (“She is coming back”) – but not quite.

The energy is still high, the band is still inspired by the sound of synthpop in the early 80’s, but too many songs pass by without leaving many traces. And the few soft songs are hopelessly “drowning” due to a very noisy audience eagerly talking with each other. Most people do not participate in the concert, so the sound of the audience is almost all of the time just as loud as the sound of the band. Sad.

Suspekt

The Danish rap trio Suspekt – with Bai-D, Orgi-E, og Rune Rask – is the ultimate “regular guest” in Nibe. No festival without these three very naughty boys. Suspekt means “dubious”, and that is exactly what the trio is – probably having the world record for most lyrics about sexual activity, described in explicit detail. With all private parts mentioned in even more raw details.

In these times of political correctness, Suspekt is nearly everything you can think of when it comes to the (very) direct opposite. The three rappers and mixers are having fun dealing with taboos galore. And the audience is having fun as well, not just singing, but happily yelling the explicit lyrics.

Suspect is the recipe for 80 minutes of rap/hiphop/techno fun without any kind of limits or borders, presented with a lot of primitive but deeply effective energy and riding along on great, bouncy rhythms and catchy details. And just when you think that they can’t go any higher in energy, they do. Respect for Suspekt.

Photos (c) Martin Damgaard/Hverdagsvinkler.dk