Two months ago the 500 tickets put up for sale had sold out to see the Getxo-born pop singer-songwriter Paula Mattheus, formerly Debajo del Paraguas and today sponsored by the important RLM agency (that of Raphael, Rozalén, Sara bars,…). Paula announced that in December she will be performing at Sala Santana 27 (capacity for 1,500 souls) and listening to her stupendous, happy, dynamic and growing Saturday concert of 17 songs in 76 minutes, we think that in a couple of years we will be able to see her at the BEC at tenor of the powerful commerciality of his pop-rock with an organic attitude, the naked and credible lyrics and the feedback he received from the mostly female audience at Sala BBK, a youngster who never stopped singing at the top of their lungs from start to finish.
In a very well-oiled sextet format (it’s the same band he’s been performing with for two years), without nerves or stage insecurity, jumping and evolving non-stop on the stage when he didn’t play the guitar (sometimes acoustic, sometimes electric, a Telecaster! !; He also told us that he was learning to play the piano with his keyboard player), without abusing the gimmicky vocal vibrato that his promoter sees as a virtue, Paula Mattheus, who lives in Madrid and had a handful of relatives in the amphitheater of Sala BBK, between jumping and guitarrazo, spit out his lyrics, which are like a purge, a catharsis, a deal with his fears, an exercise in self-help and a self-affirmation resolution in its reflective aspect, and in its transitive aspect a reckoning with her ex-boyfriends, a revenge songbook with more finesse than Shakira’s.
The Springsteenian sax solo in ‘Toni 2’
Backed by her electric band, a group with attitude and rhythmic versatility (power pop, Springsteenian intensity…), on Saturday at Sala BBK Paula gave a hit that started very well and in its second half overflowed with pure apotheosis. Paula came presenting her first full-length, ‘My concert on the balcony’, and, among the 500 attendees, 85% or more were girls predisposed to partying and joy who came with the lesson well learned, because they knew the lyrics even the arrangements and the interjections, like that of ‘cocoon!’ that Paula dedicates to one of her exes, a Paula who calls herself everything (bipolar, crazy blonde, coward, ‘You scare me’ as a title, silly…; and each example is taken from different songs, eh? )
The start of the happy concert was effusive, immediate and with constant interaction with the respectable. He opened fire with the rock and roll ‘Third date in Paris’ and the total joy of ‘Say what they say’, with its boogaloo lines. Paula then thanked us for our presence, said that she hadn’t been here for months and that she had realized how much she misses him (she lives in Madrid, you know), and wished: «I hope you enjoy it as I plan to enjoy it I”. Then Blondie was probably unconsciously like her in ‘Chica formal’, she assimilated Pausini in the BEC in ‘Gelatina’, and Gaby, the leader of Shinova, invited her to sing in ‘¿Para qué?’, a country à la Dolly. Parton.
Paula with Gaby de Shinova
He checked the rhythm with a triple medley in a duet with the pianist in which he evoked his great influence La Oreja de Van Gogh, he did the ninth as a trio (‘I want to look at you forever’), and from the tenth to the end he raised a step up to the edge of the abyss, like Malú: ‘Toni 2’ was Springsteenian rock with an explicit sax solo, ‘It’s not me, it’s you’ was a very feminine and resounding declaration of principles, perhaps the top of the quote was reached during the indie soul ‘Touched and sunk’, with a part recited to Sabina but better (“thank you very much, let you know that it was hard for me not to cry today”, he declared at the end of it), once again his band resounded to that of Bruce Springsteen in ‘I told you really’, and in the double encore he was equal to the rocker Malú in ‘When you forget about me’ (when she went down to sing through a corridor that opened up among the public) and had an impact on revenge derogatory in his goodbye with ‘The mortgage’.
Greetings from the sextet after the encore.
