2023-11-04 09:43:04
Only a handful of tickets were left unsold at the box office (15 remained a quarter of an hour before 10) to witness the stimulating live premiere of ‘Septiembre’, the new album by Mikel Erentxun, his twelfth official solo album and his album number 28 in total, counting those of Duncan Dhu. The marathoner from San Sebastian presented it in a sextet (with three guitars!), with the same band as in recent years but with a different sound (better, more authentic – without detracting from the above, of course -, more American rock), during a concert of 20 songs in 95 minutes with three canonical blues and only three revisions by Duncan Dhu (‘Running Eternity’ and the two of the encore, ‘The Blue House’ and ‘Somewhere’ in the Great Paris), all three highly celebrated by the attentive and sporadically singing audience, with whom perhaps the (first) greatest connection was achieved during ‘Cartas de amor’, a psychobilly redoubled with a noisy and climatic intermediate passage similar to Sonic Youth.
Mikel spoke to us just enough and declared satisfied before the 14th song: «It’s cool to play for the first time songs that you have heard before on cassette, on pro-tool, in the studio and now on stage. That only happens once in a lifetime. And it’s happening now.” The sound at the Antzoki was clear and you could hear all the arrangements and all the touches, for example those of the guitar and the choirs and the second voices of the Cantabrian Marina Iñesta, with whom the San Sebastian native continues to show a special chemistry. Friday’s sound was very guitar-driven, very American and country, despite the fact that ‘Septiembre’ is an album composed on the piano, an instrument behind which Mikel sat down for five songs.
Mikel and Marina Iñesta. Oscar Esteban
This Friday was the first date of the world tour and everything went as planned, except perhaps ‘If it’s not for you’, which was weak or poorly compacted (by the way, the pronoun ‘ti’ finished off four titles in a row on the setlist , between topics 14 and 17). Mikel and his people (the guitarists Marina Iñesta and Rubén Caballero, the drummer Karlos Arancegui, the keyboardist Mikel Azpiroz, and the less carefully dressed for the big occasion Lutxo Neira, the bassist), even knew and were able to carry out three canonical blues such as They were ‘Train to Mars’ (we are missing Bowie, Lou Reed and Petty, he sings in a piece that could be signed by Tarque, from M-Clan), ‘The man in me’ (with Elmore James school shots served by Marina) and the very hotelier Madrid side ‘Ladridos en el corazón’ (“Ladridos en el corazón” (“Ladridos en el corazón”) (“it talks about a bad night,” explained the author).
The rest also worked equally well, from the Americanism via Jayhawks (‘Rarely’) or the Rufus Wainwright-like delicacy (‘Circles’) to Duncan Dhu’s memories of the encore, with ‘The Blue House’, “one that I’m sure you’re not expecting it, a song that I’ve hated for decades and decades, but that I’m starting to like in this version”, and ‘Somewhere’ from the great Paris with its overflowing and communal choral optimism.
Caballero, Arancegui, Erentxun, Neira, Iñesta and Azpiroz. Oscar Esteban
Passing, of course, through the Beatlenian pianistic moments (‘Oh, Siena’, by his daughter so called, ‘Who remembers you’, much chanted by the audience, and the progressive ‘When we were yesterday’, “the best song of the new album, one that talks about trips to the past”, and whose lyrics squeak when talking about how the morning fades and there is a twilight sun), now like Billy Joel (‘In the Light of the Streetlights’) , now like Elton John (‘Pensando en ti’, “the most special song on the album for me, because it is dedicated to Pau Donés”, the late Jarabe de Palo), and also passing through a couple of perfect pop gems that stood out also among the best of the evening and which were played consecutively, the 10th and 11th: ‘Rozando la eternidad’, by Duncan Dhu, with its nananás as carpeted as the Antzoki stage was, and ‘Mañana’, with its round and its reminiscence of Duncan Dhu, although it belongs to Mikel’s solo stage (as does ‘A un momento de ti’, which seems to be by Duncan but is by Mikel and which on Friday the audience chanted with their arms raised).
Very good premiere, it has already been said. With the previous album, the compilation ‘Amigos de Guardia’ (2021), we saw Mikel live four times: at the world premiere also at the Kafe Antzokia, then at the Kursaal in San Sebastian, at the Guggenheim and at the Santander festivities. With ‘September’ there are two of us: the Fnac promotional gig and this happy and satisfying official premiere. I hope we can repeat. It sure suits us.
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