Electric guitars in happy flutter and a handsome boy, neat singer and composer of classic songs, assaulting the Palau Sant Jordi. Not everything is reggaeton and urban plots, far from it, in the sub-25 pop field, and Louis Tomlinson has given a jerk with his second solo album, ‘Faith in the future’conjuring the terrible sin of having been a member of a group for ‘teenagers’, One direction.
The British man says he believes in the future and, for now, the present does not treat him badly. If in March 2020 he opened his first world tour in Barcelona to a packed Razzmatazz (it was the last gig in the room before the pandemic closure), this time he aimed for Sant Jordi, although without managing to fill it (12,000 attendees, according to the promoter Live Nation).
The world of the fan
What does Tomlinson have? Well, a functional pop-rock brio, oblivious to innovation (he has never discussed the ascendant Brit-pop) and songs with very marked choruses that aim for the ‘Top 10’. With occasional anthemic works, like that ‘The greatest’ (which he signs with James Vincent McMorrow), looking askance at Imagine Dragons without achieving his goal. This song is dedicated to the highly motivated world of the fan: “Together, we are the greatest / We will never be cold again,” he sang, well supported by the spontaneous choir of Sant Jordi, in a verse that Scarlett O’Hara would have made her own. Incitement to uproar: “Barcelona, scream!” (shout!)
Staging without notable ingredients, with its ‘LEDs’, its video and some pyrotechnics, focusing the focus on the singing boy and at the same time giving the band’s image. But Harry Styles, his former director colleague, without being a musical explorer either, has a much less linear and richer repertoire (and good songs). The repertoire was very dominated by the new album (14 of the 22 songs of the night), although repechages from the first were sneaked in, such as ‘Walls’ (a piece with a co-author called Noel Gallagher, and it shows), as well as the still unrecorded ‘Copy of a copy of a copy’, the effective first-time hit ‘Back to you’ (which he recorded with Bebe Rexha) and a couple of covers, ‘505’, by Arctic Monkeys, and ‘7’ , by Catfish and the Bottlemen. And completing the picture, two mentions of One Direction, ‘Night changes’ and ‘Where do broken hearts go’, which encouraged howls on the track.
The present spoke through the mouth of the impetuous ‘Paradise’ and the vaguely ‘funky’ ‘Written all over your face’. And the most triumphant letter, ‘Out of my system’, a post-punk guitar piece a bit like Franz Ferdinand, which conveyed the message in favor of living quickly and intensely. Tempered balance for this idol in search of an identity that clearly makes a difference.
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