Árstíðir – Colos-Saal, Aschaffenburg; December 10th, 2018
My weekend with Árstíðir ended at one of my favorite German venues: Colos-Saal in Aschaffenburg. I’ve only seen good concerts there so far. Lights and sound are always great and the people are friendly, staff and guest alike. It’s a joy to see bands play there and I’m always looking forward to it. It was right in having high expectations, the concert was great and I enjoyed it start to finish.
I got up early in the morning, because the German train company was on strike once more and I was a little worried I might have trouble getting there, since it takes several hours to get from Reichenbach to Aschaffenburg. Thus, I left earlier than originally planned and then everything went so smoothly that I even arrived an hour earlier than I had expected. There was enough time to get some good food and relax a little before I needed to go to the venue and I still was the first person in line. It was a good start already. 🙂 Once inside I got a seat at my favorite table, pretty much center stage, got a drink, set up my camera and waited.
The guys were greeted with much applause as they stepped on the stage. Then everyone shut up and looked at them expectantly as they gathered around a single microphone, took a deep breath and started singing ‘Schedryk’. It was lovely as always. Ragnar introduced the band and I think it was the first time that people actually replied to his question “Wie geht’s?” (How are you?) with “Gut” 🙂 – quite a few people in the room had seen them before, but there were also some new people, giving them a try. That is especially easy at Colos-Saal, because, as I had only learned recently, the venue classifies some concerts as “for real music lovers” trying to encourage people to come by offering them their money back if they don’t like it and leave after the first three songs. Pretty cool idea I think.
The setlist remained the same it had been at the other shows and by now I did not expect them to change it. In the very beginning of the tour they were still trying things out, but by now they had the songs in a good running order and their stories worked well, so why change anything? Since I love all of the songs in the set, it worked really well for me and I have certain parts of the show I look forward to every night. I especially like the a cappella and unplugged parts, but it also makes me happy to get to hear some of my favorite songs every night.
This night, I paid special attention to Lotta, because she was going to leave the tour at this point, being replaced by Jean-Samuel for the remaining shows. She is an amazing violin player as far as I can tell. I talked to her about this after one of the shows, saying how I usually do not hear a difference between violin players, but have the feeling she fits in well. She said that the violin is only the cherry on top and if everything else is good and everyone else plays well, it sounds especially nice. That might have been a case of typical Finnish modesty. She is really good and I loved watching her play as well. Strings are really fascinating to me and while I admit that the cello is more important, it sounds much better when a violin is there too.
Everything fit that night, from the great venue to the appreciative audience to the setlist that really goes from old to new and takes you on a journey through their albums if you’re willing to go that way. In the course of the evening we go from just guitars (first album) to more classical influences with piano and lots of strings (second album) to a bit more electro and experimental (third album) to fully open to new stuff including drums (fourth album) with Christmas songs and covers thrown in-between. They always say they are playing songs from each album, but they are leaving out the one they did with Magnús Þór. It makes sense though, they can’t really play those songs without him. ‘Heyr hymna smiður’ can be counted as representing the album they made with Anneke van Giersbergen. Gunnar told us how they picked some songs that felt like Christmas to them along with traditional Christmas songs and I must say they made a good choice there. <3
Before ‘Jólabæn einstæðingsins’ Ragnar explained how traditional Icelandic songs are often dramatic, just like the life in the country used to be and sometimes still is and how this can still be heard in today’s Pop music. I can’t help it, whenever he mentions Björk and Sigur Rós, I smile because of a story Svavar Knútur has been telling this year, but you have to hear Svavar tell it himself. 😉 The notion of wanting to laugh is completely out of place, considering how heartbreaking the song sounds, but so far it has happened every time. I still enjoy the song very much though. When they were done and did not continue with ‘Góða veislu gjöra skal’ I immediately knew they were going to do it as an encore instead.
People did laugh a lot when they talked about the terrible Icelandic summer and ‘Nivalis’ supposedly sounding like a “winter album” – I still have no idea what a winter album is supposed to sound like – or a summer album for that matter. It does sound like an Icelandic album I think, but would not know what to base that on either. 😉 Anyway, the songs are wonderful and I love hearing them very much. So far, they mostly play my favorites. I cannot wait until I finally get to hear the remainder of the album on the next tour. 🙂
‘Hátið fer að höndum ein’ the first song after the break was really amazing and we learned that it is one of the songs that everyone sings at school and it means “the holidays are here”. ‘Passion’ was next and not for the first time it occurred to me how beautiful the strings in this song are. <3 ‘Mute’, afterwards goes off into a completely different direction. Great strings as well, but with the drums the sound is completely different. ‘Entangled’ then is somehow the best of both worlds, or all worlds, as it is even reminiscent of the early guitar songs. 🙂 This time around, Gunnar spoke about the song and told us what it is all about. Currently this one s my favorite together with ‘While this way’
Ragnar tried his hand at speaking German again (and doing just fine), before trying to teach us some Icelandic. It always works, because people actually gave it their best shot and it created lots of laughter, especially when Daníel zold us to do it “Without spitting on anybody”. I still think it’s easier to say “Eyjafjallajökull” all in one go than breaking it down into three parts, but I’ve been trying for a while. 😉 Apparently the pace to get a tan in Iceland is a glacier or so the guys claim after getting all sunburned when shooting the ‘You again’ video.
‘Nú gleymist ég’ brought the house down and people clapped as f it had been the last song already. It lasted so long that Gunnar didn’t remember what he wanted to say when it stopped. When he said it was tie for the last song, we appropriately said “oooh” and Lotta got some extra cheers when he mentioned it was her last show with them. ‘Shades’ led to even bigger cheers and it didn’t take all that long for the band to be back on stage. They had been looking happy all night and smiled even bigger now. 😀 After ‘Heyr hymna smiður’ they left again and I was sure they would play aolne last song from among the audience, but they walked back on stage for ‘Góða veislu gjöra skal’. It was the perfect ending to a perfect night.
I spent quite some time taking with the guys, said goodbye to Lotta and told the others they should think about getting a bigger string section with all the great players they have. We hugged goodbye and I was happy I#d decided to see a few more shows the coming weekend.
Árstíðir European Christmas tour: Four gigs down, three to go. Next stop: Maastricht
Setlist
Schedryk schedryk (Carol of the bells)
Ages
Með hallandi höfði
Ljoð í sand
Someone who cares
Scarborough Fair / Canticle
Jólabæn einstæðingsins
Þar sem enginn fer
While this Way
Hátið fer að höndum ein
Passion
Mute
Entangled
You again
Things you said
Nú gleymist ég
Shades
Heyr hymna smiður
Góða veislu gjöra skal