airwaves day 4

i barely had the energy to go to any shows this last day of the festival. but i did want to see ulpa... and i had to grab something to eat so i went anyway. ulpa, as always, was great. i guess this is the their third airwaves performance that i see and they have consistently been among the highlights. walter meego was next and i was not impressed - i thought the songs i had heard had some promise but they were pretty dull. some of the music was alright but the vocals sounded pretty much if the postal service went horribly, horribly wrong. benny crespo's gang was next and sometime in the future they will probably become quite good. right now, they just make me think of muse - this is not a complete put down b/c secretly i like muse a little bit. the keyboard parts seemed to drawn out and the songs didn't seem very dynamic. watching them i kept waiting for something to happen - when something happened it wasn't bad. or maybe i was just too tired - at least, my friends liked them a lot more than i did. but i have to admit that their female singer has a really great voice, which the band should use more. then i went to get some pizza and contemplated going home to sleep. but since i was curious to see patrick watson i kept going. i was somewhat surprised to see that the line to see the kaiser chiefs was longer than for the brazilian girls, which was enough to resolve my difference. and the brazilian girls turned out to be fun - just pretty solid and pleasant pop (for the most part). patrick watson ended the festival for me and may just have been the festival highlight. the only thing that you can really complain about (which is pretty much all i do) is that his voice sounds a lot like jeff buckley. which isn't really much of a complaint. musically, there isn't much of a similarity - as much as i like jeff buckley, his music was almost generic. not bad but it didn't bring anything new to the table - he just did it better or put his own twist on the formula. in patrick watson's case, you could take away the vocals and it would still be interesting. at any rate, a great end to the festival for me. there were still some bands playing but they couldn't possibly top patrick and i was quite happy to head home with his songs on my mind.

so overall, this year's airwaves was pretty good. obviously, i would have liked to see wolf parade. it is unbelievable that the organizers would make such a bad mistake to put them in one of the smaller venues. but then again, this is not exactly the first time the organizers make such mistakes. another downside (yes, i like to complain) is that people talk too damn much during performances - especially during relatively quiet acts like trost or patrick watson. but then again, icelanders aren't exactly known for being polite.

Patrick Watson - Giver
Patrick Watson - Luscious Life