April 2, 2011
My second Domino artist to see within the same week made me think it was Christmas already. Anna Calvi, the Italian-English freakin’ talented guitarist, who released her debut album in January, was to play in Nijmegen, the oldest or second oldest city in The Netherlands (there’s this eternal dispute about Maastricht being the oldest). Anyways, I went there with two of my flat mates Jazz and Dorothy and Jazz’ friend Jimmy. During the train trip they found the nature to be incredible and went “ooo” every time they saw cows, goats etc, when I was about to fall asleep of taking antihistamine earlier. Very good, very good.
They were fixing the rail ways which meant that we had to hop into a bus at some point, which made the trip even more everlasting. I wondered why Dorothy and Jimmy kept talking about gay people, but apparently “kai” means chicken and “homosek” delicious.
As we arrived to the central station, I started to wake up slowly again and the first thing to do was to get some döner. I was really surprised that there were some “hills” in the city when we walked around. Probably, because Nijmegen is close to the German border? We wanted to visit the only bike museum in The Netherlands (weird that there’s only one bike museum here), but we didn’t have time since all places were closing, but we had time to take loads of pictures. That’s one thing I realized; Chinese people like to take pictures.
The outside of the venue, Doornroosje, was really nice with all the cool graffiti.
I consider myself lucky to see Anna Calvi performing in quite a small venue, because I’m pretty sure that she’ll be huge in a couple of years, considering that at the moment she has many sold out gigs all over Europe. And that you seldom come across with pure unique talent in the music biz nowadays. The first time I listened to her music I thought; if Twin Peaks would be taken to this decade, her music would go with it perfectly.
The performance was hypnotizing. What a charismatic artist she is. Okey, I was disappointed that she was able to play the guitar in only two songs (injury), since I do think that her guitar skills are just mad. Though not concentrating too much on how she works her guitar, I got to realize even better how powerful her voice is. Later at home when I showed Judit the pictures, she said “Oh the girl with the voice!” and did a poor imitation. All of us are still amazed of how her speaking voice differs from the singing one. I guess that’s one of the reasons, which makes her really fascinating, I mean it seems that there are two different persons.
The gig felt short, which left the audience craving for more. I think that it’s only the second time that I haven’t gotten enough from a gig, which is always a positive sign that surely I will go see the artist again, when I'd have the chance. I was hugely happy to get the set list, which Calvi herself brought to the stage. But what makes me happier than that was the forty-something man who reached out to take the piece of paper from the stage and not keeping it to himself, but giving it to me. And yes the audience was full of middle-aged people, which I can’t see in Finland at all. Before going home I just had to buy the signed CD too. If you have the chance to go see her, then do it! She’s going to perform at Ruisrock this year, so Finns there’s your chance.
In general; ÜBER SATISFIED.
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