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| Arnim Teutoburg-Weiß - Guitars/VocalsLondon, Camden Koko 25/08/2015 |
You know that feeling
when you find out that the ‘new’ band you just discovered have actually been
around for nearly as long as you’re dumb backside has been on the planet? Yeah
that happened to me last month.
I saw the magnificent Beatsteaks at Camden’s KoKo in August
and to say I was ill-prepared is a gross understatement. In fact to say it is
an understatement is an understatement because, frankly, it’s taken me over a
fortnight to recover.
It all kicked off with the undeniably punk rock Hello Joe from the 2004 album Smack Smash which has been knocking
about, under my nose, for over a decade. The track pulled me in with its brash The Clash-esque opening and by the
big-band finale I was hooked.
It occurred to me that no other band has ever looked so
blissfully cheerful whilst sounding so sensationally fierce but my mind really
started to blow when I realised that ‘fierce’ was just a singular string in a
perfectly crafted bow.
Track three of the night was Milk and Honey which has a chorus tinted in a melancholy that
Morrissey himself would be jealous of. What
Beatsteaks have managed to craft is setting those vocals to an upbeat and
can’t-help-but-dance track that has been on repeat here for weeks.
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| Torsten Scholz London, Camden KoKo 25/08/2015 |
Yes I am relentlessly referencing other artists to assure
myself that I do in fact know some bands.
Missing Beatsteaks was just a lapse
in concentration, I promise. Ugh, I can feel the hatred from here.
By the time that we’re a few songs in I’m ready to throttle
every single member of the crowd for not tracking me down and telling me about
this band sooner, and then everything stated above collided in a single track
that, whilst not being the latest single from Beatsteaks, quickly became my
song of the moment.
Everything Went Black,
from last year’s self-titled album, tells a dramatic narrative which was
transfixing live but is also charmingly documented in its video, released in
November. As you can probably expect it has that theatrical edge and a dash of
ferocious aggression but overall you can’t help but dance to it.
And neither can Beatsteaks frontman Arnim Teutoburg-Weiß, though in fairness I don’t think
he could stop dancing to anything. On the stage, up on an amp, in the crowd, on
top of the crowd, that guy has some serious moves. I strongly suspect that he’s
getting some sort of groove supplement from the hat’s he’s always wearing.
Maybe I haven’t thought that through all the way, but it’s a possibility.
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| Beatsteaks London, Camden Koko 25/08/2015 |
A
few tracks after Arnim crowd rowed his way back to the stage (yes, I mean
rowed) guitarist/vocalist/keys Peter Baumann stepped up and proved that more
than one member of this band can rule a stage. His beautiful rendition of Hey Du (which is performed in German)
put the crowd into a trance and they serenaded him with the words right back.
When
Beatsteaks re-joined Baumann on the stage for Ticket, the video for which was uploaded a month ago, Arnim had
changed his hat. This fuelled my suspicions that headwear is the key to his
magical musical powers.
The
main set closed up with I Don’t Care As
Long As You Sing, the sentiment of which perfectly summarises what is so
fantastic about Beatsteaks.
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| Arnim and Peter London, Camden Koko 25/08/2015 |
But
that’s not where it ended, Beatsteaks were just getting started. They didn’t
leave that stage until TWO encores later, including a cover of the massive
Beastie Boys track Sabotage. They
could have added on 10 more encores and played their entire two-decade-long
discography if they wanted. The crowd had caught the contagious energy from the
stage and would have stayed there for a week if they could.
The contained aggression of this band is astounding,
sometimes sounding directly punk, but more recently on the lighter side of that
coin. Whichever end of the spectrum the track is on its shrouded in an
infectious dance beat and that is where the magic is.
Happy 20th Birthday Beatsteaks, I sincerely
apologise for missing out on the first two decades of your life.
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| London, Camden Koko 25/08/2015 |
