Ville Valo @ Berns, Stockholm

When Ville Valo (VV) dropped a new release during 2020, listening to the new songs while spending most time indoors, due to very obvious and not soon-to-be-forgotten reasons, brought back memories. Though I doubt any clarifications are needed, Ville is the former singer of the Finnish goth rock (or love metal) band HIM, which I stumbled upon 25 (!!!) years ago. They instantly became my favourite band, opening the doors to goth rock, goth metal and heavier stuff, and to a lot of other Finnish artists that I still listen to this day. I can fill in several posts on this blog just by reminiscing those times and the impact the music had on me. But I won’t. Because this is not about HIM (which were the headliners of the first ever festival I attended), this is about last evening’s concert. So let’s take a short detour from memory lane, for now, and focus on the present, though it will be hard to separate the two.

So after 2020, VV started teasing us with singles in 2022, and released a full album in 2023. To my delight, he also chose to tour, and included Stockholm in his stops. The tour arrived in Bucharest at the beginning of the month, and I read a few reviews and followed the event as, just like everywhere else across Europe, Ville and his music are very loved and appreciated by quite a large audience in my home country, and yes, mostly due to his former band. So I went to this concert with what I had already read at the back of my mind, without checking the setlist, and just knowing that he alternates his new tracks with HIM classics. The venue: Berns. Lovely location, been to a few concerts there before, and somehow very fitting for a goth rock evening. The opening act: Zetra. I would have loved them 20 years ago. Unfortunately for them, the sound was poor. Don’t know if it was because of where I was standing (middle back), or because the sound engineer didn’t care much, but it was quite unfair to them and to us. And again, unfortunately, the sound issues continued a bit into Ville’s show too.

Around 9 pm the man made it on stage to the delight of a sold-out venue. He started the concert with Neon Noir, the title track of his first album, and immediately after jumped into Right Here in My Arms. And the audience exploded. And I am going to say it now so I get it out of the way: never in my several years of attending concerts in Sweden have I seen the audience having such an intense reaction. There were no moments of patiently and quietly waiting for the next track, no awkward silence, but a continuous thrill. I’ve never seen people dance the way they did, singing along every verse, reacting after intense lyrics or highly anticipated guitar solos. It left me bedazzled. But this only enhances the value and the appreciation of the man that was standing in front of us on the stage, a man, an artist, whom even if he didn’t share many words, let slip more than words can say: our reactions, our singing along made him glance back at us and smile. Really smile, clearly happy for what the music was bringing his way from us. And on the opposite side there we were smiling and happy for what the music was bringing our way from him.

But it took up to the 6th track (Kiss of Dawn – not a favourite, probably the only song of the evening that I could have been without) for the sound to settle, for the drums to stop sounding like they were stuck on the bottom of a plastic barrel, for the guitars to blend and for Ville’s voice to sound as it should. That was also about the same time the sound engineer sat down and allowed me to have a first class view of the stage.

The evening beaded for us a string of new songs intertwined with HIM classics, one of each. People went crazy on Buried Alive By Love and sang along to the new music, proving again, without it being necessary, how much it was missed and needed. Gone with the Sin was an amazing display of a goth ballad, allowing Ville to showcase his low and deep voice. But while it was a bliss to listen to all of these tracks, I was surprised by the fact that the new songs sound better live than their recorded versions. Which is exactly the opposite of HIM songs. Maybe I want to read too much into this, but also maybe it shows a sign of musical maturity from the melancholic Finnish musician. While HIM albums are all very well produced and a pleasure to listen to, full of hooks and addictive sentiment, the new tracks didn’t strike a chord in me until I heard them live, and I also heard things I didn’t catch while listening to their studio versions.

Join Me (in Death), still one of the most beautiful songs ever written and one of my favourites, if not even the one, was sung by everyone, and if it had been a seated venue, it would have gotten a standing ovation. It’s timeless. But the biggest shock of the evening for me was Saturnine Saturnalia, a new one. I had it on repeat all day today. Hearing it live was such a beautiful moment.

The encore had three songs: two HIM classics (the first one being Killing Loneliness) with the new Baby Lacrimarium in between. After taking us all the way back to 1997 with the beautiful When Love and Death Embrace ballad, Ville bowed his head to all parts of the audience, smiled and walked off stage in the frantic clapping and screams of the audience. His live band ended the show with an instrumental postlude and that was that. But there’s more to Ville Valo and HIM than what this post can talk about and in the end some things are better left unsaid, as they need to be listened to.

The 69 Eyes @ Fryshuset Klubben, Stockholm

I wish I had seen the 69 Eyes when I was 20!

Going to this concert was like going back in time, feeling 20 again, when I was a goth with studded bracelets, chokers, long black skirts and black eyeliner, nervously hiding the chippy black nail polish on my fingernails, staying up late to lisen to the music in the dark. Dreaming to see the Northern Lights. And my favourite Finnish bands playing live. While most of them I’ve seen at least once, The 69 Eyes were a first for me. I had no clue what to expect from this concert. So here it goes.

I went to the venue without really thinking much about it. I was expecting to be greeted by a crowd of goth girls, ready to scream and faint at the sight of the dark-haired Finns. I was greeted by a crowd that was at least 15-20 years older than my expectations. While the set-up of the event was a minus, what happened after the show begun was an unexpected surprise. They started playing with no delay, being greeted by a somewhat passive crowd that needed to get drawn into the action. And boy, how we were drawn into it! Jyrki 69’s presence on stage is hypnotic, his charisma and stage persona make it impossible to take your eyes off him. He practically hooked us all and took us down memory lane while the band were playing some of their best known tracks, going al the way back to their melancholic goth days and returning to their more recent goth’n’roll sounds. One after the other, the old and new music was warming up the crowd. But nobody was more pumped in that venue than the drummer. Jussi 69 is phenomenal! His drumming, his energy, the way he was standing up and scrutinising the crowd, everything was a treat from his side. And the guys playing their guitars… I can’t put it in words how magical the intro to Wasting the Dawn sounds live, or how well and in tune with each other they all are.

My favourite song from them was the 3rd in the setlist (Betty Blue), but surprisingly, it was Dance D’Amour that made my heart skip a beat and Gotta Rock that made me dance. Around me, the crowd gave the warmest greeting to Gothic Girl and The Chair. There was singing and dancing, cheers for new songs and applause for the golden hits. There were people knowing the lyrics to their new music that acted unimpressed by Feel Berlin. And people who knew every lyric and danced and sung to every tune. And this only made me think that The 69 Eyes seem timeless. That they are and always will still be here, a genuine band, writing music, playing it live, enchanting with both new and old music. And I wonder again why it took me so long to see them live.

And if you managed to read this far, I have to make a disclaimer and say that most of this post, and the pleasure of having seen them live, are enveloped by melancholia, the cold and dark type that they so wonderfully blend in their music. And by a lot of memories of moments when I heard one of their songs for the first time, when I saw their videos on TV late at night on VH1’s Friday Rocks, of places I’ve been or moments I lived while listening to their songs on my mp3 player, my iPod or my Spotify. A walk through time with music. There are a few bands that stuck with me along the way, they are one of them. Kiitos!

A Naturally Peculiar Evening with Steve Hogarth and RanestRane

This gem of a concert and trip to Rome (maybe I will write about Rome later) were planned well in advance, sometimes during the Summer when the gig was first announced, shortly after my attending two of Mr h’s Holidays in Sweden concerts. I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into, besides the fact that they played together before and it sounded good. Who are they, you ask? Well, Mr h, of course, the singer of Marillion, no need for an introduction anymore, and RanestRane, Italian progressive rock band, another “why haven’t I listened to this before” kind of situation.

After getting lost in the Roman public transport transfer from metro to train, and ending up staring at a sign on the wall pointing to Auditorium Parco della Musica, the venue of the concert, my excitement for the upcoming event grew even stronger. I only had to wait two more days and I filled those with walking around the city with an utmost desire to go in three directions at the same time and see everything. But the evening of the concert, so longed for, came up at the right time, and the walk to the concert hall (named after the Italian composer Ennio Morricone) fell into the usual ritual that such events lock the audience under. Merch secured, seat taken, phone on silent and that was that. 9 pm sharp Mr h stepped onto the stage with his usual grin, cheeky mood, scrutinising the audience, taking the time to say hello, joke a bit, and get right into the music with Thank You Whoever You Are. It didn’t take long and the piano beginning of Afraid of Sunlight rang throughout the hall, followed by White Paper and Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat“. One after the other, the songs were flowing by our ears, while in front of us was just a man and his piano. Not the usual set-up for a h Natural gig, which, we were explained by the singer himself, was not going to be a usual gig at all, and things were carefully planned and plans needed to be respected.

The four members of RanestRane (Daniele Pomo, Riccardo Romano, Massimo Pomo and Maurizio Meo) stepped on stage during The Deep Water, and joined in playing their instruments (drums/percussion, lots of stuff but mainly the keyboards, acoustic guitar and bass). They played three more songs together (Sounds that Can’t Be Made, Waiting to Happen and Estonia – which I really wanted to hear in this set-up, and which was dedicated to a late fan), before they were joined on stage by the Flowing Chords Choir, who took backing vocals to the next level and completed the sound in a very unexpected way (though the audience was teased with their presence several times before the concert). They swirled through several more songs, with my heart skipping a beat for Nothing to Declare, they nailed Man of a Thousand Faces and left us wanting more with Easter.

Though I missed the usual and rather intimate connection that Mr h manages to establish with the audience during his solo gigs, the interactions and the laughter, I can’t explain how excited I was to see the band at work on stage, and to discover the surprises that they had in store for us, the audience, for the evening. Now anybody that did their research or has knowledge on who was going up on stage in front of them that evening, knew that no less than excellence was aimed to be delivered. And the delivery itself was to be made with passion on the part of everyone performing, from the focus of the guitar player, to the perfectly timed clinks of the bar chimes, from the rhythm of the bass and the joy of its player to the refractive arrangements of various musical instruments and the glee of singing along each lyric that Riccardo Romano doesn’t shy away from, to the harmonies that the choir scattered on top of it all, and above and beyond to the voice, the presence and the performance that Mr h brings with him in his shows, either individually or as the lead singer of Marillion for 35 years (and one week at the time of the concert). Totally different than a usual h Natural show, unlike the artistry and sound of Marillion, unusual, unexpected, naturally peculiar, as the name of the event announced it while playing on a word game merging the worlds of those involved. In other words, I liked it.

Even though I’ve been to many concerts, and I know that they can’t go on and on, as much as I want to sit and listen for hours in a row, the final moments always leave a void in my stomach and the excited butterflies that flutter around the moments before the shows start are long gone. A meet-and-greet, a thank you, a word of appreciation shared can lift spirits and make dreams come true, but can’t match the magic of the moments when the music is live and loud and flowing.

Happy 2024!

A song that marked the year that’s gone
Still playing in your head.
You had it on repeat while on
A sleeper train’s high bed.

A peaceful sleep, a movie seen,
Or just a quiet day,
After a busy week that’s been
Slips right out of the way.

Hanging with friends, singing along,
Or dancing in pajamas
To the beat of your favourite song
Ignoring all the dramas.

Things might not change over one night,
But they fall in perspective,
Of what was wrong and what is right,
And what’s the next objective.

A fresh new start with lots of plans,
Or just a continuation
To dream, to laugh, to dance,
And take the next vacation.

Wishes for peace, feelings to treasure,
With health coming your way,
No resolutions and no pressure,
I say just: come what may!

Happy New Year!

Marillion @ Palladium, Köln

After weeks of careful planning and getting ready, it was almost time to start packing for my train trip down to Germany, excited to see one of my favourite bands again, to take the night train, to meet friends and to visit new places, some of which I have treasured under the form of postcards since my high school days. But… just hours before my departure, because German train driver unions decided to go on strike, my train got cancelled so my 30 seconds of panic were overcome only by the thought that nothing and no one will stand between me and seeing Marillion play live. 15 minutes later my train was rebooked, my holiday rescheduled and my hotel bookings replanned. And the following day after this tiny emotional rollercoaster, I boarded the night train to Hamburg, excited and nervous, and listening to This Train Is My Life on repeat. With my schedule re-shuffled, I had one morning and early afternoon to explore Hamburg, and I chose to go see Miniatur Wunderland, where I really felt like I was in wonderland. Maybe I will write more on that in another post. Maybe not. Soon after, it was time to board my next train to Bremen to catch up with people I haven’t seen in years, laugh, talk, and see bits of the city. This was a brief visit, as the next day I was already on another train heading to Köln. Even if DB managed to delay and re-route the train twice, I was feeling the excitement of approaching Köln. Yes, it was the city where I was going to attend the concert, but it is also home to something that I’ve dreamt of visiting since I was a kid. I kept a postcard I received through mail among my closest and dearest belongings. I kept looking at it thinking that I was going to see it one day. And that day finally came. And in the pouring rain I spent 10 minutes staring at the Köln dome like it was the most amazing cathedral I had ever seen. I am a sucker for gothic architecture, but standing in front of it in the cold, torrential Autumn rain, lit by spotlights, I felt tiny and overwhelmed. And happy. I continued to the hotel, which I specifically booked close to the concert venue, enjoyed a nice dinner that I booked at a place near by (it’s called Shi and the food was delicious), and went to bed early. The second day in Köln was spent visiting the cathedral and wandering the streets, just until it was time to get ready for the concert.

It is amazing how, on a concert day, you see audience members flow down streets from public transportation stations, taxis, bike parkings or simply by walking, drawn to the night. You know where they are going, they know where you are going, you don’t talk but you understand that you are there for the same thing. The venue: Palladium. Huge hall, standing concert, bad visibility from the back, the side view restricted by columns that hold balconies that were not opened for the public. A (somewhat empty) “golden circle” section kept us a bit to the back. People had been there for hours waiting excitedly. I managed to sneak in between some groups to a place from where I could see the stage, and from where I knew that I could sneak in further and deeper into the crowd as the concert went along. A melodic, though a bit depressive opening act (iamthemorning) tried to get us in the mood for Marillion, not that it was needed, but it’s always nice to listen to new music as Marillion has a habit of touring with interesting artists that sound good. Then around 9 pm it was time for the band to go on stage.

They started, as in every gig of this tour, with The Invisible Man which comes with a very theatrical performance. I liked it as an opening piece, it is a good hook to get people into the moment. It was followed by Easter, which probably came a bit too early in the setlist. This song is usually a crowd-pleaser, but this time I feel it didn’t get enough attention from us, as it obviously deserves. After Mr. h’s Summer gigs in Sweden, I got stuck on quite a lot of songs, Sounds that Can’t Be Made being one of them. I was so happy to hear it live again. I think that one of the nice things about the Marillion concerts, for me, is that I don’t know all of their songs, a few of them always catch my attention because they sound unfamiliar, or I haven’t listened to them enough. This was Sounds… last Summer, and Beyond You this time, alongside Lucky Man, Splintering Heart and King, which I know that I’ve listened to but they never caught on or not like Map of the World, the following song, did from the first time I heard it years ago. On to Reprogram the Gene and here we were listening to songs from their latest album, which will soon turn two. It’s unreal that two years have passed already and that the band announced that next year they will start working on new material. Quartz was the song where I finally took out my phone and started taking some pictures. The good thing about it is that it had a really nice background on the screen behind the band, the not so good thing about it is that it’s not one of my favourite tracks, however, people seem to enjoy it quite a bit. It’s nice to have close to ten minutes to observe other aspects of the event rather than taking in every sound coming from the direction of the stage. The Crow and the Nightingale, an emotional ballad with beautiful lyrics and a scent of Leonard Cohen, also coming from their latest album, led us to Care, a four-parts track that closes An Hour Before It’s Dark, the same album released in 2022, a beautiful melodic piece that flows with emotions, carried by the keyboards and h’s voice, with powerful lyrics and a wholesome composition. Or at least that’s how I perceive it. And I totally fell for it after listening to its last part at Mr. h’s gigs last Summer, where you could hear the raw melody of Angels on Earth delivered by only his voice and some piano chords.

And then it was time for the first encore: Splintering Heart and, to my joy, Neverland, played after Mr. h told us that they would have liked to play Gaza on this tour, but chose not to, as to not bring everyone down. I already added the first track to the list of songs that I was not very familiar with, but Neverland is another story. From the first notes, to the lights, to the lyrics, the piano part, having the chance last Summer to hear the story of how the song was written, the audience’s total silence, almost no phone in sight, everyone listening, and the explosion of cheer after Steve Rothery’s guitar part and after the song’s ending. Definitely one of their best live pieces. And one of the songs that yes, I got stuck to after hearing it live for the first time. Because you cannot truly like it until you hear it live. I was totally lost in it.

Quick break for us to cheer and demand more, and after a short fun jam of Seven Nation Army, we got King as an evening closure. A very rock’n’roll piece to close with, a performance that sees Mr. h grabbing a guitar and joining in on the fun alongside Steve Rothery, Mark Kelly, Pete Trewavas and Ian Mosley. And it was over. How did a bit more than two hours pass so fast, I have no clue. It was a great setlist, and yet I know that I would have liked to hear so many more songs. I think that’s the fun thing about the Marillion weekends: you always know that you may get a second chance to hear a favourite, but not in one-evening events. In this situation you need to settle for what you get. After the last goodbyes and thank yous and a nudge to get back to where we belonged, it was time to go home, or to the hotel, same one for many of us, trying to walk back into the life of a regular evening, but knowing that this was nothing close to a regular evening, not even a regular day or a regular trip.

I departed Köln the next day, after a lazy morning at the hotel and a last glimpse at the dome from its front, its side, the Starbucks café while taking shelter from the rain, and the train window. I boarded a train going back to Hamburg thinking to myself: what a fantastic place I visited!