The beginning of the day on June 13 in the Botanical Nights. Following their 20th anniversary tour, McEnroe landed in the capital to review those topics that were left out of the commemorative tour. The flowers roared with their calm “indie pop” that brought forth, as if it were a rehearsed metaphor, a rainbow between Storms and Asphalt in Madrid.
The group from Biscay paid tribute to the Morrissey band with “When This Night Plays” and, although I couldn’t find that girl with the “torn Smiths shirt” on the track, the audience welcomed this anthem with love and a lot of mime in the form of choruses and swaying. Lezón managed, between laughs at her new look with her hat, to convince her faithful to dance a penultimate “Gracia” that gave way to the already classic “Electricity”. And so, between fires, traffic lights and phrases, McEnroe passed the current to The Ponds and Anni B Sweet.
McEnroe
Under pink clouds and a purple sky, more than a dozen hooded men are placed on a stage in the dark. Megafonía announces that, for the first time in the Botanical Nights, the show would be recorded. Euphoria among the attendees who, deluded – I include myself – for a moment we thought it would be a normal concert.
Of all those mysterious undercover figures, one voice rises, lonely, over the Botanical Garden of Alfonso XIII: “I have drunk so much that…”. A Years B Sweet that, on the cover together with Íñigo Breguel (The Ponds), leads the ritual that has just begun. Between the tunics on the right side of the stage, subtle whispers of strings begin to be sensed. Since when are there violins in The Ponds? For when this first theme connects with his inseparable “(…I am) dying of thirst”, that place is no longer a stage but a temple; and we, the witnesses of a ceremony guided by a truly magical team of violins, yes, but also cellos, trumpets and trombones.
I can’t deny that I went to this appointment with some fear: with an outstanding studio album, the chances were high that the live sound would not be as expected. However, soon the brigade of blue hooded cloaks in front of me showed me that the fusion of the Cantabrian group and the Malaga singer is capable of much more than synthesizers and distortions. maybe the voice of Years B Sweet It didn’t have the strength I expected after my 320 listens to the album, although the energy of Andrea Conti on drums and the precision of Íñigo, master of ceremonies, on keyboard, made up for any weakness.
That power, backed by an indispensable bass at the service of Daniel Pozo and a bewitched “orchestra”, managed to close the “Your Flower Hair” turned into a divine apocalypse. The string quintet planted unique details in an exquisite version of “I’m leaving here”which gave way to the intimate start of the star from this bubble in which we were all floating: “You were shining.” And indeed, the psychedelia of The Ponds flashed on a night in which the public melted before that rite of elevation. The rest of the pieces “Comfortable Bubble and Unexpected Elephant” they flowed one after the other with a lighting design measured to the millimeter and an execution in which a lot of rehearsal and detail was palpable.
The keyboard, sometimes turned into an organ, “took us to heaven”, “if it exists”, to lead us to the final two songs of the album. The meticulousness of the production of the album became a reality, once again, in the successive explosions of “It Gets Dark Again”. After this return to the shadows, and at last – with an hour of concert behind them -, the formation presented itself and spoke for the first time at the haunted altar.
The improvised sect of celestial robes then inaugurated an appendix of topics typical of The Ponds (“Cannon Fodder”, “Paper Nails”…) and of Years B Sweet (“Have a good trip”). All this, styled in the pure style of this magical combination created between artists. Bold melodies that broke down all barriers between jazz, rock and even operatic pop, with Íñigo’s keys as glue. A psychedelic chaos about which, at the time of the show, I was only able to write down one word in my notebook: “promises”.
