I'm From Barcelona – Scala, London 25/11/08

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Photographs by Anika.

It must be hard touring with two dozen members, even in a band as intrinsically happy as I’m From Barcelona. Ridiculous overheads and logistical nightmares aside, the tensions that must come from travelling round the world with so many people must get a little wearying. It’s certainly had an effect on Emmanuel Lundgren. The ringleader of Sweden’s foremost mentalist musical army has clearly lost some of the wide-eyed joyousness of times past, with new album “Who Killed Harry Houdini” having more in common than the reflective harmonic folk-pop of Loney Dear than the sugar-rush exuberance of their debut. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing- there’s only so much major-key ‘ba-ba-ba-ing’ a human being can take and it’s always encouraging that a band wants to do more than rehash past successes. But this new downbeat vibe does have some implications for their live show, renowned for being one of the most all-out fun experiences live music have to offer.

First off, there’s less of them. By most standards, twelve musicians is a veritable army but compared to the 27-member juggernaut that first graced the stages of London two years ago it’s a serious cut-back. Admittedly, most of the additional members were superfluous hangers-on but they helped build the party atmosphere the band are famed for. Then there was the setlist, heavily weighted in the first half towards the new songs. It‘s easy to see why they did it- it puts the focus on the music rather than antics for once, and allows the audience to appreciate the band’s ear for wistful melodies. But as pleasant as ‘Paper Planes’ and the like are, it simply wasn’t the same without that OH MY GOD I‘M DROWNING IN CONFETTI feeling.

But then, just as I was becoming accustomed to their restained new persona, all hell suddenly broke loose. A torrent of, yes, scarlet confetti rained from the heavens, a hundred balloons were unleashed from the stage and thus emerged the I’m From Barcelona of old, determined to party like they’d never partied before. Old favourites We’re From Barcelona and Painter, with their satanically catchy melodies and undemanding nursery-rhyme lyrics even managed to get a London audience to shed their I’m-too-cool-to-emote personas for a night and bounce about like madmen, and to the horror of all present I was given the microphone for a whole sixty seconds to atonally caterwaul into. Naturally the highlight of this cavalcade of joy was encore-opener ‘Treehouse’- I’d practiced the appropriate dance-moves in the preceding days and felt I delivered them with grace and dignity but Emmanuel effortlessly eclipsed my interpretation of a ’you and me house’ with some commendably enthusiastic crowd surfing. Unfortunately, proceedings didn’t conclude with full-on stage invasion with half the audience pogoing to a happy-hardcore remix of ‘We’re From Barcelona’ (as it oh-so-memorably did at ULU last year) but even taking the slow-burning start into account I’m From Barcelona easily retain their crown as the foremost purveyors of pure glee in the world today.