Sunday, March 4, 2018

Tour of Tours - Live 2018.03.02 Lido, Berlin, Germany

Artist: Tour of Tours
Venue: Lido
Location: Berlin, Germany
Date: 2 March 2018

The Tour of Tours is an ambitious and appealing concept. Supergroups such as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young might be an influence not just in terms of genre and style, but also in format. In this case, five bands based in and around Germany teamed up for a tour in which the various performers served as each other's backing band. The ten musicians traded instruments just as readily as they traded songs and almost all sang backing parts and harmonies when not taking the lead.

The bands whose various members were on stage were Honig, Jonas David, Tim Neuhaus, Ian Fisher and Town of Saints. While they all share a certain foundation in singer-songwriter, folk, and indie rock traditions, they all have their own angles and styles, which makes for a diverse presentation. Presumably not every variation will appeal to every listener, but over the three hours of the show, they covered a lot of ground. Some songs leaned closer to modern rock, some had a bit of an electronic edge, some were straight folk numbers, some were in the realm of acoustic pop, some had country overtones, and most fell somewhere in the wide spectrum called indie rock. And then there was Ryan Thomas Carpenter's hilarious/bizarre lounge number presumably titled "Is That All There Is?". Almost everyone in the collective took the lead at some point, even the quiet Italian drummer Davide Iacono.

The band played two lengthy encores. For the last one, they jumped off stage and played their one collaboratively written song, "Song of Songs", in the middle of the audience without any electric amplification. The crowd was at the ready to share the vocals in the chorus. Afterwards, the band climbed back on stage for one last number, an extended take on Ian Fisher's existentialist singalong "Nothing". It was a fitting end for a long show that featured a variety of perspectives on the meaning of life.

When the show was over and I realized what time it was, I couldn't believe that three hours had passed. The rotation of performers and styles meant that the show always had something new to keep my attention, so the time passed by without my noticing. It's hard to beat seeing five solid bands in a unique formation for the price of one show.