Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The Happiest Girl Alive

Last month I saw The Whitest Boy Alive at Astra, which had its grand opening that night and is my new fave venue in Berlin. In fact, besides Cupcake and Monster Ronson's, it's the ONLY reason for a Mitte-Fuzzi to venture into Friedrichshain.

The Norwegian band The New Wine opened up for Whitest Boy. Erlend Oye's musical legacy was noticeable (but luckily not overbearing) in their sound. I was actually thinking their music kinda sounded like the love child of The Whitest Boy Alive, Cut Copy and Phoenix (minus any homoerotic undertones that might have possibly been evoked by that analogy).

The Whitest Boy Alive were as amazing as ever. Throughout the entire gig, Astra was filled with this incredibly warm, glowing and happy energy bouncing to the band's pop disco beat. I even feel like all my blurry, slow-flash pictures of the crowd accurately embody what it actually felt like to be there.

Highlights included (but were not limited to):
- Erlende jumping into the crowd with the cow bell,
- the keyboardist wailing on his keyboard like it was a guitar,
- and all the covers of my old school faves from back in the day (in addition to the usual suspect Robin S., The Prodigy's "Out of Space" and Daft Punk's "Around the World" also made my techno/house heart go pitter patter).

This was without a doubt my feel-good gig of the year. And it's seriously no surprise I left Astra the happiest girl alive.