SOKO - Live In Berlin
"...as innovative, magical and well conceived as any of the best things I've seen this year..."
With one day advance notice, I learned that the sensational music artist/actress, Soko, was coming to Berlin to play a show with her band. Having followed her story loosely over the past five years I've been intrigued by her song writing and have a great respect for her voice.
One time I was in the crowd at a pretty spontaneous Soko performance, at the old White Trash Club, which she sold out simply by posting an announcement two days before she played. It was a solo performance and it went something like this: Started the set in front of a standing room only crowd, with three songs in a row of very quiet acoustic guitar, finger picking amazing strong chord structures while she honestly sobbed, tears and all as she sang. The audience looked at each other in a puzzled state; wondering if it was ok to be watching this. Was something wrong? What was happening?
For the fourth song, Soko wiped her tears, and went to sit behind a big drum set- pounding out a great rhythm, screaming, singing and hollering as if ten cowboys were getting drunk at a wild west barn-dance!
She does not drink alcohol, but this image accurately describes the radical transition in tempo and mood which we witnessed. From that moment on, the concert was full throttle, and she had us all jumping and partying along to her wonderful songs and stories for the rest of the night.
On July 11th 2015, she and her band took the stage at The Gretchen Club - also to a sold out, packed to the walls crowd. Her devoted fans were pressed against the stage for an hour before the show, making sure to get the closest view.
In the band were Maxime Sokolinski on guitar, Christine Owman on bass and cello, Nicolas Musset drums and Akemi Fujimori on guitar. Soko played drum machine, keyboards, guitar, drums and bass as well. Everyone in the band sang fabulously together.
I've not yet heard Soko's new album - 'My Dreams Dictate My Reality' - yet, so this was all gonna be fresh and new for me. The first thing that hit from the moment the band played was that everyone on stage was incredibly accomplished as musicians, powerful as hell, and extremely fine to watch.
Nicolas had that rare ability to push the rhythms on his drums along with Soko's machine drums, adding high energy, and yet never falling behind or ahead of the beat. Never an easy thing to try! The twin guitar attack from Maxime and Akemi was thoroughly unstoppable, akin to Jimmy Page (Akemi) heavily chording stood next to Johnny Marr (Maxime) rocking fast twisted arpeggios with plenty of attitude and volume. Christine flew on a Fender Mustang Bass, standing tall and majestic, with her golden hair flashing in the light. On Keaton's Song I could not fail to notice that Christine's cello playing had some of the most impeccable strong pitch accuracy I think I have ever heard in a live rock show. It was a great melody part too, but the way she delivered it was jawdropping, and yes - noteworthy!
So what was this music like? What was happening? This has to center around Soko's voice. For this tour she was not storytelling and emoting over a solo acoustic guitar, this was a really powerful rock band sound, but as always with Soko's compositions the chord sequences were never predictable or familiar, impossible to peg or put neatly in a box. The vocal melodies also were so interesting and never obvious or derivative of any kind of music really! The melodies are very compelling and memorable while glowing with true originality.
Frequently she would inject soaring, percussive little shouts in between many phrases: shouts that fit the mood of the song, and of the crowd, perfectly. No matter how she improvised, how utterly wild she was getting physically on stage or emotionally, her yells and melodies were always so strongly in tune and with varied wonderful tones, that it was often mystifying and shocking. The drum machine beats often started the songs, and the beats she created were really swinging; a combination of new wave texture, hip hop groove. These beats would set the tempo, but then the intensity of the band would swallow it up and take off like a jet. She also used her drum pads for pounding out spoken samples (there was some kind of hilarious dramatic dialogue; she did replying back and forth to phrases she had recorded with Ariel Pink).
Much of the set was very wide and powerful, utilizing the full capabilities of the band, often using great live vocal harmonies, and never overly chaotic or noisey. The songs in her set had great variety in tempo, energy, arrangement and melody - so one never got the sense that things were in any way creatively repetitious. In the middle of the show things quieted down and some of the famous introspective, what I perceive as "heartbroken/sad" songs appeared. Her fans loved those every bit as much as the crazy-rocker songs, and many sang along or mouthed the words. For me there was the right amount of this energy during the set and she closed with a series of super upbeat energetic songs. During one of them she dived into the crowd and went in a straight line rapidly from the stage to the back of the room and returned, carried over our heads in a posture that was a combination of Yoga Power and Superwoman flying across the sky. Her boot came down on my head, and then I was lightly splashed with a bottle of water she threw into the crowd, so I felt double blessed and a tiny bit baptized by the end.
To be honest this concert was as innovative, magical and well conceived as any of the best things I've seen this year. And as I have seen an unusually high number of very inspiring shows (Patti Smith, Eintuzende Neubaten, The Voidz, The Strokes, Jose Gonzales, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Candy Darling and GOASTT among them) I wish that to be taken as a great recommendation to see Soko play live, and to compliment her on maintaining such a high level of dedication to her music and singing. Sincere kudos to her band as well.