There is something truly moving about witnessing the commitment to his own fragility with which he faces these concerts. After the ones in Barakaldo of this return tour of La Oreja de Van Gogh after her departure from the group in 2007, Movistar Arena in Madrid experienced a new chapter in the singer’s battle to feel like an artist again. The vocalist is not in her full potential, but it is precisely that courage in exposing it that transforms the concerts into a high-voltage affair that is accompanied by an undeniable wave of underlying hope. The audience understood it perfectly last night and left their throats to encourage the protagonist, whether by chanting absolutely all the songs or encouraging her with continuous: “Amaia, Amaia.” And so, stumbling, with anti-climax stops between songs, with some tonal mismatches, but also with moments of festive intensity, a strangely successful concert came about.
The San Sebastian group completed the first of its six dates at the Madrid venue. The capital will be the city that hosts the most recitals of this tour of the band, repeating it in the capital today, Friday and Sunday, and then completing the half dozen there in September to end on December 30, at the end of the tour. At 15,000 people per night, we are talking about 90,000 tickets sold in Madrid alone. This information is no joke.
The four musicians came out first and began to play a melody that would lead to the nervous keyboards of the introduction of January 20. Ascending from the ground (a metaphor for leaving hell behind), Amaia Montero appeared, carried by an elevator. And the scrutiny began.
Her voice, the one that has been used these days for undocumented people with an account on Time passes, voices change: nothing happens if you know how to adapt artfully to the new situation. And Amaia is in it.
A basic problem soon arose in the show that has to do with the staging, based on a, in principle, beautiful succession of moving white panels that changed color during the night. A concept that avoids variegatedness and opts for cleanliness and asepsis. Until then, everything is fine. The drawbacks come because each musician occupied a small platform that practically none of them abandoned (a bit the bassist, Álvaro Fuentes) which left the vocalist too alone, who found no support for interaction. All the focus, therefore, is on her, and one more degree of pressure behind her.
The boys from La Oreja were never the joy of the garden on stage and it was precisely the role of offering support to the vocalist (both to Amaia and in the Leire Martínez stage) that fell to her, who decided to get off this tour perhaps sensing that the best conditions to return were not met. His replacement, Imanol Goikoetxea, a good musician who accompanied Álex Ubago for years, played last night from the rear and without taking a step forward.
The show was hampered by some breaks between songs, once justified by “there is a technical problem.” In so pretty Xavi San Martín and his piano were left alone on stage. The idea was for Amaia to join right away, but she was delayed. You had to see the keyboard player violently turning his neck to see if his partner’s blonde hair was showing. One, two, three, four… and nothing. It was only a minute, but it felt like forever. Finally, Amaia appeared and they lifted the song as best they could.
But over the setbacks the songs prevailed. The period that brings the best and most memories to human beings is the solace of youth, and for many Spaniards that time was marked by the songs of Van Gogh’s La Oreja when Amaia Montero served as a battering ram. So last night all the attendees, a majority of thirty- and forty-somethings with the advantage of women, got on their delorean metal to go back to those early 2000s, to the time of Aznarian “España va bien” with a soundtrack centered on the rumba canallita of Estopa, the rough pop-rock of El Canto del Loco and the maudlin pop of La Oreja de Gogh.
The evening did not lack any of those hits with lyrics that shamelessly embraced kitsch and that three decades later sound just as mellifluous. And therein lies their greatness: they are already cheesy classics. They sounded Tell me in my ear, The beach, The 28, Soledad or performing with Amaia’s company in that already historic recital at the Bernabéu, a circumstance to which it is the law to attribute part of the responsibility for Van Gogh’s La Oreja having a new life. When at the end it rang Take care of yourself, The shouting buried Amaia’s voice.
Once the recital was over, the final scene was quite graphic of what happened for an hour and 50 minutes: the five musicians hugging each other in a circle, with the vocalist effusively hugging each other. It consisted of a dressing room scene that took place in full view of all spectators. It was like saying: we did it, one more concert we have survived. Tomorrow, another battle…
