Recomposed from Thursday’s Latin wiggle, the third act of Cruïlla shook us in a different way, attending to that maxim of Barón Rojo, “my vibe is rock& rdquor;, with varied and even extreme expressions. Waiting for the attractions of the early morning, Sigur Rós, Franz Ferdinand and The Offpring, we were able to spend without major evils mental labyrinth staged by the British group alt-J to the very physical impudence, with a punk soul, of that exponential duo from Empordà called Cala Vento.
On paper, alt-J could act as the perfect anti-festival group: a trio with a hieratic presence, clinical detachment, songs rich in unpredictable turns, bizarre lyrics and contempt for the dictatorship of black drums. But their nice stories of child murderers, acts of cannibalism, and couples slaughtered by disease they held the crowd in the Fòrum, producing a disturbing effect, like a sinister ‘easy listening’, with those deceptively serene choruses, violated by heavy bass or electronic ‘crescendos’.
caged singer
Songs from their latest album, ‘The dream’, which the group already showed last November at the Sant Jordi Club (and which could well be called ‘The nightmare’), which this band from Leeds with a hieroglyphic name (alt-J is the shortcut for the letter delta on Apple keyboards) deployed with precise surgery, as scientists of a sneaky and perverse art-rock. Facing the climax of the session, the most spectacular numbers stood out: the choral epic of ‘The gospel of John Hurt’ and that hymn to impotence called ‘Philadelphia’, with its caged opera singer.
In the face of alt-J’s much-thought-out display of weirdness, the runaway songbook with refreshing naturalness, similar to the motto “less is more”, practiced by Cala Vento, also before a large audience. Electric guitar and drums as simple and hyper-expressive supports of a rock vandalism in happy contact with the pop tune. And giving scenic packaging to the ideological discourse of his new album, ‘Casa linda’: as his performance progressed, Behind her, a small wooden house was being built in an accusatory allusion to the difficulties faced by citizens, the young woman in particular, in accessing the house.
Energy “quite proper, like home”, celebrated and supplied by Joan Delgado and Aleix Turon, a tandem that, well accompanied on their records by figures such as Eric Fuentes or Santi García, practices a form of rock that is the antipodes of alt-J : simple look for seasoned sound dynamics, that at the Fòrum they could both sound a little ‘grungie’ (‘A good year’) or lean towards a muscular funk-rock (the angry-euphoric ‘Todo). Familiar with Cruïlla (on their third visit), they released tensions with ‘Isabelle Cantó’, ‘Gente como tú’ or the bilingual assault, Catalan-Basque, of ‘Passar pantalla’, which, consequently, they signed with a “ Thank you very much, eskerrik asko”.
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