Barcelona's Independent Review Website

La Casa Azul
2008-04-10 Maremagnum I’ve been living in Barcelona for two years now and to be honest I’ve still yet to really get into many Spanish bands. There are a few exceptions, like the excellent, semi-heavy metal, Standstill, who were truly fantastic at last year’s Primavera Sound, and the odd smaller band, like weird punkish “How Dare U.” The majority of the bands I’ve heard though sound like rather ineffective impersonations of existing, dare I say, English language bands. At festivals, groups like the much promoted Astrud and Mendetz have failed to set my ears alight. But still, I went with an open mind to see a huge outdoor appreciation of La Casa Azul, a summery poppy kind of band who clearly have a big following in Spain. I already knew a few of their songs from hearing them in clubs, and had checked them out on YouTube in advance, so that I at least recognised them when they came on stage. In the end however, it did not help greatly as the five piece were reduced to one. Lead singer Guille Milkyway was doing the job of five for the evening, with only full size video screen versions of his compadres for assistance. And to be fair, he did an excellent job of it. Or at least that’s what I thought until realising that this is in fact the only incarnation in which La Casa Azul perform and that the sunny faced Brady Bunch-esque members visible in the band’s videos are nothing but a front for Milkyway himself. Yes, in the words of wikipedia, La Casa Azul are “una banda de ficción.” Which was a little disappointing as I was hoping to see pretty blonde Clara on stage, but oh well. Milkyway is actually a fantastic performer and the concept of the fictional five other members is quite appealing – though apparently he never admits that he is the sole artist responsible for the music, despite the five never appearing outside of their videos. He sings, plays the guitar, synths and keyboards. He manages to do a lot and at the same time get the crowd going. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to actually see a crowd get excited about something – maybe it’s because this was a free concert. And how nice it is to hear the crowd singing back the chorus on songs like “Como un Fan” and one-time hopeful Eurovision entry, “La Revolucion Sexual.” The open space between the Maremagnum and the Aquarium turned out to be an excellent setting for a concert. The songs sounded really crisp, Milkyway has certainly learnt lessons from his own skills as a producer on how to create a clean pop sound in a live arena. And though in the end I felt he probably went on a little bit too long, at ninety minutes including three encores and the last featuring an acoustic version of a track he’d previously played, I woke up this morning wanting to hear his songs again. Pretty good.