Bilbao and Villforth at Bahnhof Pauli - 6 December 2024
Last night at Bahnhof Pauli in Hamburg, a capacity crowd was treated to a dynamic set by hometown indie pop heroes Bilbao. The relatively large venue, a basement club nestled among the theaters and restaurants of the most commercially developed block of the Reeperbahn, is, as the name implies, an elaborate mock-up of an urban underground train station, complete with a curved white tile wall, enormous ventilation fans and lines of chains hanging from the ceiling, all complemented by one of the largest mirror balls that I’ve had the pleasure of seeing. It’s quite a beautiful space, but I have to say that it comes across as just a bit sterile and corporate for a rock club, or for a train station now that I think of it. The crowd, which was impressively mixed in terms of age and gender, also struck me as a bit more clean-cut than what I’m used to at club shows, although that probably says more about the sort of concerts I’m in the habit of attending than anything else, and, to be honest, I probably stuck out considerably less in this crowd than I typically do at shows.
Bilbao was supported by Villforth, an earnest singer songwriter with poignant, emotional songs and a beautiful voice that occasionally, when she allows a little bit of grit to sneak in, takes on touches of Stevie Nicks or even Dolly Parton. Villforth describes herself as hovering between indie and pop, but there’s also more than a pinch of county in her sound, as well as in the intensely personal and experiential quality of her lyrics. One of her songs in particular, “Crying over Chop Suey,” was a perfect and honestly heart-wrenching description of the weird liminal relationship that can exist between two people who have recently broken up, when you know that it’s over but the feeling of connection between you is still lurking under the surface. She was accompanied by a guitarist and singer whose name I unfortunately didn’t catch, and who had apparently come in at the last minute, although I would never have guessed that they hadn’t been harmonizing with one-another for years.
After the first set ended, Bilbao didn’t keep us waiting long for the main event. I have to admit that when I first checked out some of their songs in anticipation of this show, I wasn’t sure what to think. Their tendency to employ dense sound beds and anthemic aesthetics initially reminded me of a lot of the music from the indie rock and pop worlds that I’ve been relatively unmoved by over the past twenty years or so, and I had trouble finding the personality in their song writing. When I spent some time digging into their records and what I could find about them on the internet, though, they started to win me over, largely through their funny and sometimes heart-warming videos, produced in-house by guitarist Robin Helm, and their friendly and unassuming demeanor in interviews. By the time I was heading to the show and listening to their new album, Soaked, which came out on 18 October, I could hardly remember what I hadn’t liked about them in the first place. I’m very glad that I decided to give them a chance, because they brought one of the highest energy performances that I’ve seen, especially from a group that doesn’t scream.
To provide a bit of context, Bilbao is a group of guys who were all playing around quite a bit on the Hamburg scene for the ten years or so before they decided to form a group together during a schnapps-soaked night at the Reeperbahn Festival in 2019. This was, of course, rather awkward timing for forming a band. The pandemic hit before they ever had a chance to play a show, but they hit the ground running nonetheless, taking advantage of the time and lack of distractions afforded by the lockdown to focus on songwriting, and making a name for themselves on instagram with their “24h Quarantine Cover Challenge”, for which they rapidly produced eight impressive covers of classics from Fleetwood Mac, Paul McCartney, and Lionel Richie as well as more modern favorites from MGMT, Lorde, Bombay Bicycle Club, and others. By the time things normalized a bit they had released their first EP, Isola, had their first album, Shake Well, in the works, and were ready to hit the festival scene hard.
The name, Bilbao, which they share with one of my favorite places in the world, is, according to them, more connected to a shared fantasy of a tropical paradise than to the real city nestled in the mountains of Basque Country. In fact, at the time when they chose the name, none of the band members have ever been the actual Bilbao — and one wonders if they might have been slightly confused about where it is — although they have been there to perform since; there’s even a video about it on YouTube. The fantasy of a tropical escape seems to be very close to the hearts of this band who have often described their style in interviews as a “summery melancholy”, an image that seems oddly appropriate for musicians from the dark and damp town of Hamburg.
They opened their show with the first two songs from Soaked, “Bother” and “Calling”, and they made a pretty effective advertisement for the new album, bringing the level of energy and intensity to a level that would be an impressive climax for most bands within the first minute after coming out on stage. This frenetic pace, which they for the most part maintained throughout the show, gives a relevance to the names of both their albums that is much more apparent in their live show than it is from hearing them on record. They have described themselves as fundamentally a live band, and I completely agree that if you want to truly experience their charm, you need to go see them. Essentially every song they played was more exciting, dynamic, and fun than the recorded version.
They followed this opening explosion with “Get Up” a single from Shake Well about the desire to escape from the daily grind for which they produced an extremely endearing video featuring actress Catalina Suchomel. This was a tighter, less freewheeling performance, for which the band members mostly restrained themselves from bouncing around the stage and stood neatly behind their microphones, but I have to say that it was one of the more perfect performances of a pop song that I’ve seen in person. In particular, I was charmed by the back-up vocals from Bassist Jannes Eschrich and from Helm, whose tastefully placed falsetto harmonies were a highlight throughout the show. “Get Up” was definitely a highlight, but in general I was very impressed with the professionalism of Bilbao’s performance and by how thought out and cultivated their set seemed to be. Vocalist León Rudolf knows how to work a crowd, constantly expressing his appreciation and evoking them to return the sentiment. At one point, during the song “No Breaking News” he managed to get the audience of austere, reserved Hamburgers into a sing-along that would have made Pete Seeger proud.
Another major highlight of the show was Lionel Richie’s “All night long,” one of the covers from their Pandemic project which they have apparently continued to perfect over the past four years. I always enjoy a well-chosen cover, but I can’t think of many instances when I’ve seen a band make someone else’s song their own on quite this level. Rudolf in particular seemed to channel the energy of Richie — on a particularly good night — moving around the stage with a surprising grace, occasionally attacking a conveniently placed set of hand drums, and finally leaping into the middle of the audience for a circle dance that had the crowd in a frenzy. One moment in particular when he stood up on the stage monitor, arching his back like a gazelle and turning his face to the sky in triumph will be, for me, the most enduring image of the night.
The show had too many highlights for me to go into all of them, so I’ll skip to the end. After the “final” number, the band hardly made a pretense of ending the show, leaving the stage for maybe ten seconds before coming back for an extended encore, beginning with "Mojito," one of the more danceable tracks from Shake Well, which has been singled out as a favorite of the band in interviews. This led to the grand finale, "Ghost City Central," a song from their first EP which, according to Rudolf, has always been their closing number, and it was quite a production. The song, in it’s recorded version, has a vaguely countryish vibe, which they seized on a took to a theatrical level, with Helm and Rudolf hamming it up with Opry vocal harmonies, several playful breakdowns, and, hilariously a chorus of Natasha Bedingfield’s 2004 soft rock hit, “Unwritten” (“No one else can feel it for you, Only you can let it in…) This all somehow evolved into a frenzied partial cover of “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers, which then turned into another song that I haven’t been able to identify (if anyone knows what it was, please let me know) before finally closing with the entire band singing another chorus of “Unwritten.”
The whole thing was an exhilarating experience that was well worth the price of admission. Final verdict: Bilbao is a band that Hamburg can be proud of, and I think everyone who was there last night would agree with me that if you ever have the chance to see them, you should.
-Peter Lawson - 7.12.2024
Setlist:
- Bother
- Calling
- Get Up
- Lifted
- Pizza Box
- No Breaking News
- 2002
- Petrichor
- All Night Long (Lionel Richie)
- Parasols
- Lobster
- Slow It Down (with Villforth)
- In a Heartbeat
Encore:
- Mojito
- Wild At Heart
- Ghost City Central (Featuring snippet of “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield)
- Mr. Brightside (The Killers)
- ???
- Choral refrain of “Unwritten”
