Pet Shop Boys the Clear Highlight in Esbjerg
This year’s edition of Suset Festival in Esbjerg – the third in the series – is over. Two packed days of moped racing and piano playing, quizzes and competitions, and plenty of music. With British Pet Shop Boys as the absolute highlight. They brought their latest tour to a spectacular close with a tremendous show at the harbour in Esbjerg.
Welcome Back, Drew
“What’s up, Esbjerg? It’s raining. But we don’t care.”
That is something singer and songwriter Drew Sycamore could easily say. She and her band were standing under cover on the stage at the harbour in Esbjerg, unlike the couple of thousand spectators who had to battle sometimes quite persistent rain. Well, that never really caused the concert to lose momentum, because after a short break from her career, the Danish-Welsh singer is back at full strength.
And she still knows exactly which buttons to press. For example, she knows how to seriously get the audience going with the highly catchy “ba-dap-bah” chorus of “Another Lovesong”. She then fills the set with plenty of earworms from a relatively short but hectic career. “I Wanna Be Dancing” was given a particularly playful treatment, prompting the audience to clap, cheer and scream for more. Songs such as “Electric Motion”, “Take It Back” and, not least, “45 Fahrenheit Girl” were also given everything they could handle, complete with strong guitar and drum work and solos.
Welcome back to the front row. And good luck with creating even more new pop/funk songs of sharp, international calibre in the wake of the latest album, “Occurrent Affairs”.
Suspekt – The Ultimate Recess
If there is one thing the Danish rap/techno trio Suspekt – comprising rappers Bai-D (Andreas Bai Duelund) and Orgi-E (Emil Simonsen), along with mixer Rune Rask – are not, it is politically correct. Or wholesome. On the contrary, their lyrics deal with everything they could imagine doing with women in intimate situations, described in every possible detail. Every detail, they said.
Their musical style is often monotonous, pounding techno – and no, there is apparently no song in which they have not done that thing, you know, to. In that respect, Suspekt is music’s answer to the ultimate recess. And it seems as though the recess – and Suspekt – is getting bigger.
On stage in Esbjerg, the trio brought no fewer than 16 dancers, young women dressed alike in the same type of trousers and T-shirts bearing the Suspekt logo. Because it may well be that Suspekt sounds ugly and nasty, but there is nothing sloppy or random about them. Everything is carefully thought through, including the moment when Rune Rask lets the techno train run off the rails to the sound of songs such as “Rune Rask er for syg”, “Shotsrør” and “Kinky fætter”.
Parts of Suspekt’s highly uninhibited show resemble an experiment: how far can you take it? Apparently, very far. After a while, it can become somewhat monotonous. But they can just about sustain it for an hour.
A Little Too Introverted
From Kolding comes the 16-year-old band Blaue Bluhme, who achieved their popular breakthrough with their third album, “Regnvåde sale”, thanks to songs such as “Det er din kærlighed” and “Det husker jeg”. Their style is fairly unassuming pop rock, with a touch of the shimmering, crackling and slightly noisy.
The overall impression is sympathetic, but Blaue Bluhme play and sing in a somewhat introverted manner, which largely invites the audience to stand, observe and listen without necessarily taking the music to heart. There is a little too much distance between the songs that directly address the audience.
Delightfully Ambitious Seebach
“Shit, this is cosy. We’ll do it again tomorrow.”
After 18 years at or near the top of the Danish charts – ever since his breakthrough hit “Engel” – singer, songwriter and, above all, hitmaker Rasmus Seebach clearly enjoys every second of performing. He enjoys getting things started. And turning it up. And turning it up even further.
The secret to his success – apart from an unusually dense stream of earworms – is keeping the audience engaged. All the time. Especially by getting them to sing along (and that is not difficult, because few songs are as immediately singable as Seebach’s), but also by getting them to clap and sway their arms like reeds in the wind.
The arsenal is a familiar one – solid, tried-and-tested hits spanning 18 years – but Seebach is highly ambitious when it comes to them. Almost every song is given a little extra love. A slightly harder pulse, a slightly longer introduction or other little detours; in short, the kind of seasoning that you go to a concert to experience.
His father’s old Grand Prix hit, “Under stjernerne på himlen”, is given a little more tenderness, while at the other end of the spectrum, the techno hit “Natteravn” gets a couple of extra blows around the neck.
All in all, this is absolutely outstanding pop entertainment: relaxed, straightforward and carried by a great sense of gratitude. And it is beautifully supported by a highly accomplished band. Special praise goes to the two fantastic backing singers, Ayoe Angelica and Stine Kinck.
Exciting Electropop Experiment
Danish Spleen United – centred around founder Bjarke Niemann – is first and foremost a personal experiment, a sonic journey, an excursion across the steppes of electropop and synthpop. An orgy of sound. Electronic sonic beauty. And this excursion is well worth following and allowing yourself to be swept along by.
The group’s one-hour concert took shape as an enticing display of highly danceable electropop of the kind in which the singing (on some songs) functions primarily as yet another intriguing form of seasoning.
Spleen United have existed since 2003, more actively in some periods than others, but following the latest album, “The Blur of Zebras”, and several recent concerts, including this year’s final (and highly successful) one in Esbjerg, one can only hope for even greater activity.
Niemann and co. made generous use of material from their albums and singles, and although the group is not among the country’s most prominent acts, they had an attentive audience who could sing along to most of the songs. And dance energetically to all of them.
100 Minutes in Dreamworld
“We were being boring,” came the self-assured line in the second and final encore from British Pet Shop Boys.
And that is simply how it is with Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe. They have never been boring. On the contrary, they have not only always been highly entertaining, but have also always set high standards. For themselves, their songs and their audience. You have to keep up, because since their first single (and hit), “West End Girls” from 1984, they have developed electronic pop into something of an art form. That is why their latest tour, “Dreamworld – The Greatest Hits Live”, is almost an art installation in itself, complete with imaginative videos and graphics for each of the at least 20 songs, often loosely based on the original music videos.
They set off at full speed with a spectacular opening featuring “Suburbia”, “Can You Forgive Her?” and “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)” alongside a handful of other songs, with only Tennant and Lowe on stage, each positioned beneath a street lamp. Then the curtain rises, and three additional musicians appear: a drummer, a percussionist and a keyboard player. From then on, the breathtaking hit-making really gets going.
Among the highlights are two songs at opposite ends of the spectrum: a truly fired-up version of the brilliant combination of U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” from 1987 and Frankie Valli’s “I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” from 1967, and, at the other end, the quiet, beautiful and tender “Love Comes Quickly”, in which Tennant gets the maximum effect from walking across the stage as slowly as it takes to sing the song.
Particularly effective is the visual accompaniment to the Village People’s “Go West”, consisting entirely of old footage of gay and lesbian marches in San Francisco in the 1970s. Perhaps a reference to today’s regime “over there”?
This is how Pet Shop Boys add a wealth of good and even better ideas as extra seasoning to every single song. And so a 42-year-old, brilliant pop invention ended up becoming the expected highlight of this year’s Suset Festival at the harbour in Esbjerg. All in all, it was 100 captivating minutes in a pop-music dream world. The concert could easily have lasted at least another hour, making room for even more surefire hits.
