Depending on who you ask, the Sunday headliner at Low Festival was either Dani Fernández or La Casa Azul. Both are right. On one hand, Dani Fernández drew a sizable crowd, though she performed at a still relatively early hour. La Casa Azul, by contrast, offered the most ambitious production and was the festival’s historic marquee attraction, but it finished in the early hours, when part of the audience had already begun their journey home. After all, Monday work awaited, and many attendees faced a car trip from Parque Antonio Soria, with the traffic that marked the three days of the festival.
Both Fernández and La Casa Azul aptly embody the blend of pop and rock that has defined this first edition in Torrevieja. A lineup that didn’t aim so much to push boundaries as to lure the usual crowd and turn a venue that had been unfamiliar into a familiar, recognizable space.
Facing the afternoon sun, Depresión Sonora pulled off a show for those who want to squeeze every drop out of their ticket. Their usual repertoire of machine-like rhythms and melancholic lyrics might suit an evening or nighttime set better than broad daylight, but precisely that contrast makes the difference with Sidonie even more pronounced.
Sidonie’s live show is pure pop, but from another era, and deliberately so. The band enters the stage hand in hand, in a line; they all wear shorts in a boy-band fashion, and Axel Pi’s dances are picture-perfect, even more so considering that while all that is happening he pounds the drums with fearsome intensity, giving his body and soul.
Then come the songs, of course: a repertoire full of anthems, though Sidonie leverages the format as much with jokes as with the music. In one song, one of the members stages a mock venting; in another, Marc Ros steps down to the floor, climbs onto the shoulders of a collaborator, and invites the audience to do the same, to the point that a spontaneous conga forms with people perched atop others. Another highlight arrives when placards with the song’s lyrics appear, a clear nod to Bob Dylan’s legendary video.
Musically, the highlights include the euphoria of ‘Fascinado,’ the intimate acoustic ‘En mi garganta,’ the mash-up of ‘Et puc odiar més’ with The Cure’s ‘Just Like Heaven,’ and the classic moment of crouching before the collective jump. All of it aligns with a concert concept that feels almost nostalgic, as if time had not moved. Axel’s dancing rounds off a proposal that began with ‘Catalan Graffiti,’ though it almost seemed like an excuse to celebrate an unfailing songbook once again.
What Dani Fernández has been doing for a while now seems to have drifted a bit off course, and the singer herself conveys a sense of still dealing with the scale of her success. During the show she admits that it had been one of those days when she needed to look in the mirror and remind herself that she deserves all that is happening to her. She also gives the impression of finding it hard to leave the stage and stop soaking up the applause of an utterly devoted audience.
Her current tour presents a spectacular industrial and almost apocalyptic aesthetic, led by a huge metallic sun-shaped structure with a giant eye inside. The image is striking at first sight. Thereafter, the set leans into unbridled emotion, with melodies pushed to the limit and a rock attitude that at times may feel contrived, though the crowd buys into every gesture. Even songs that could have ended up at the bottom of an album end up becoming audience favorites.
The challenge for La Casa Azul was another: to lift the spirits of a crowd arriving at one in the morning and to sustain it until after two. Any fan of Guille Milkyway knows that one hour isn’t enough to fit all his classics, but the band ensures the show doesn’t feel short. Literally every song is an explosion of euphoria, every chorus a burst of happiness, and every number seems to deserve another shower of confetti. Personally, I had never seen so much confetti fired so many times at a single concert.
The staging helps turn the concert into an immersive experience. A large LED screen projects a universe of planets, galaxies, and vibrant colors as the musicians spread across platforms illuminated with side screens. Guille Milkyway, as if he had just landed from another planet, is a constant explosion of adrenaline and euphoria. And yes, it more than meets the challenge of waking a crowd that initially felt fatigued. From ‘El momento’ the show never loses steam. It’s virtually impossible to leave a La Casa Azul concert without a shot of happiness.
Chronicle in progress
