The day she said goodbye to me, she was more whole. It took me many years to understand what she had told me in that cold hotel room: sometimes she is better away. She had some reasons, which I did not understand, and Mikel Izal you must have yours. Their fans don’t understand them either and that makes them sad even though they have come en masse to WiZink to say goodbye. Fortunately for the band and the public, immortality is one of the characteristics of music and the songs will remain.
The farewell begins with ‘El pozo’ and ‘Asuntos delicates’, two semi-fast rocks that are a good example of the quintet’s style: powerful drums, two complementary guitars, a fat bass and the mattress of a binary rhythm. In other words, a lifelong rock group. One of the names that critics have given them is “kings of spanish indie”, which Mikel Izal slightly disowned in this newspaper a few days ago. And it’s logical, because indie was born out of the need for “theoreticians” to classify everything that escapes them.
After ‘Copacabana’, a reiteration of the style, Mikel gets emotional talking about the band’s trajectory and the WiZink, packed to the brim for the second night in a row, cries a little with him. Then the first flashes come out in ‘Meiuqèr’, which is a minimalist ballad full of new colors (harmonizer for voice, ukulele, acoustic guitar…).
All five members talk for a moment. The sad city acclaims them, everyone cries a little and the concert continues unstoppably towards the bitter goodbye.
The first great success is ‘Little great revolution’, which should be studied by any composer who does not know how to play the drums. He leads her, leaving a lot of space at the beginning and gradually filling it as they gobble up bars. Harmony, simple but creative, is his great secret.
With each song they let go a little more. The WiZink also notices it and turns upside down, singing almost all of them.
A moment of acting
Towards the middle, ‘The man from the future’ sounds very good. Halfway between rock and pop, it is perhaps one of the songs that would justify the need to create a new musical term. It incorporates a synthesizer to color the harmony and has a medium tempo that is difficult to classify. Is this indie? I don’t know. Does it matter? Nope.
In a similar vein is ‘Wormholes’, which plays right after.
There are many echoes of seventies rock (the guitars from ‘Practical Panic’) in their music. Mixed with the pop aesthetic and the image of a sensitive and bohemian man projected by Mikel Izal, the band (self-managed and independent) has achieved break the barrier that separates nightclubs from theaters and large squares without too much paraphernalia or controversy, a ‘rare bird’ in modern marketing.
Mikel Izal
Coming to the end, ‘Bill Murray’ sounds, one of the group’s best compositions. It benefits from a pointed guitar that plays a simple melodic arrangement and has a aroma of popero success that the others do not have. ‘Farewell’, very appropriate to line up the encores, changes the sporadic tears of my neighbors in the seats for passionate sobs.
After the typical dribbling of those who don’t want to leave, the encores end with ‘La mujer de verde’, perhaps their great song. The quintet greets in an instant that contains an eternity and again, and like every day, the lights come on and life begins again.
Goodbye, even if it hurts, does not kill; he even teaches. They told me in a cold hotel room and it took me many years to understand it; I hope that my armchair neighbors do better.