Árstíðir – Arena, Vienna; December 11th, 2022
With the concert in Vienna, I rejoined Árstíðir’s Vetrarsól tour. It was much later than I had hoped for, but it felt good to finally be back. I had missed the guys and the music so much. It was a lovely show too and they had even changed the setlist a little bit.
My trip from Dortmund was – of course – delayed, but rather uneventful. All I needed to do was sit down on a train at 4:30 in the morning and then get out in Vienna a bit over ten hours later. Sadly, checking in at my hotel took so long that I barely had time to eat and relax before I had to leave for the venue (and that was just around the corner).
It was snowing when I got there, but luckily it did not take long until they let us in. Met G. and J. right away and L. and M. a bit later, seeing a few other familiar faces in the crowd as well. standing front row was actually a bit too close, but I didn’t care, it was right where I needed to be.
The hall didn’t look all that nice, but the sound was surprisingly good and the lights weren’t great, but not terrible either. It was going to be fun. I think I have said everything I have to say about every song by now. The music was lovely, I really enjoyed their stories and they made me laugh a lot.
For once I had decided to stand more at the center so I was enjoying a good view of Guillaume for a change. Usually he gets blocked by Gunnar and I rarely see him. My own fault, I know. 😉 Anyway, I was happy to be back and ready for the show, not expecting any news or surprises that night.
I was wrong. After ‘Ljóð í sand’ Daníel said they would play two songs from their latest album Pendúll. Thus, ‘Endatafl’ directly followed ‘Hvenær kemur sól’ and they left out ‘Ages’. I wondered if they’d just grown tired of it and decided to play one less song, but later during the Set, Daníel mentioned how they had added s song because they had had so much fun with it in Vienna the last time: ‘Þar sem enginn fer’. That was a welcome addition to the set for me and is a song I have always enjoyed.
One funny part was when they announced ‘Passion’ and someone shouted out “That’s my favorite song!”. It made all the guys smile. 🙂 The first set was amazing and I smiled at everyone around me when it was over. Yes, this had been missing in my life for the past five days. <3 Got myself a drink and chatted with the others for a little while until the second part started.
After ‘Heyr, hymna smiður’, Gunnar announced Ragnar’s Christmas song and he started singing, but there was no piano and he didn’t notice until Gunnar said something about it. Apparently the sound was on his in ears, but not in the room. It gave us some laughs. The a cappella version sounded pretty nice too.
Some nights I like the first part of the show better, some nights the Christmas part and some nights I just love both. This was one of the shows where nothing could go wrong for me. I loved everything about it. All the Christmas songs were beautiful and the sing along with the audience went great. Even the French guys sang in German this time. 😉
The encore was brilliant too and we learned that the hat Raggi wears is from the Austrian/Viennese Fire fighters and L. bought it for him last summer. One less secret. 😉 ‘And so it goes’ was absolutely gorgeous so they left me with a happy smile.
Afterwards they got a few gifts in form on Schnaps and woolen hand-knitted (almost) Santa hats and I took a group pic with said hats. Daníel told us that there are some surprising similarities between different languages regarding ‘Silent Night’ and that ususally they manage to learn the words well enough to fake it. I spent a lot of time chatting with Guillaume and he expressed they’d been worried about me when I didn’t show up in Berlin. That’s why I’d texted Ragnar about it… Anyway, it was lovely to be back, I got a few hugs and then it was time to say goodbye and get some rest. I would have loved to go out and party with the gang, but I clearly wasn’t ready for that yet. Some other time.
Setlist
Ljóð í sand
Hvenær kemur sól
Endatafl
Later On
Passion
Shine
Þar sem enginn fer
While this way
Shades
Heyr, hymna smiður – strings only
Gläns över sjö och strand
Jólin alls staðar
Hátið fer að höndum ein
Ísland farsældafrón
Góða veislu gjöra skal
Allt er hljótt
Ró
Things you said
Heims um ból
Bringing back the feel
And so it goes
Vetrarsól tour 2022 – six gigs down, three to go. Next stop: Tübingen