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How do you chronicle when you have no words? I’ll try.
As soon as the curtain fell, the staging blew us away. El Madrileño transformed the WiZink stage into an elegant restaurant: the musicians sat at round tables with white tablecloths; waiters taking orders and serving non-stop; aesthetics measured to the millimeter and he, in a suit, master of ceremonies. From your host position, he spent the concert giving way to his collaborators, moving between tables and dancing, smoking in secret and, above all, having fun. Singing, which is singing, does not sing anything; composition, as he has recognized a thousand times, costs him; but the show, that art that consists of entertaining, is going to change him forever.
“Puchito” presents a film live, an almost theatrical show in which image, music, color, symmetry and timing are equally important; the songs are the least of it, his proposal goes much further. The concert is broadcast on a screen that has the same quality as its video clips, almost cinematographic, taking the concept of the audiovisual to its maximum expression. ‘You forgot’, first of the night of the album ‘The Madrilenian’, was very organic supported by some guitars that carried almost all the strength of the show. The band, in the Big Band style, did not intervene too much, but overflowed when it did. In each song we saw a different show: in ‘CAMBIA!’ the collaboration of Adriel Favela and Carin León brought a certain Mexican flavor; in ‘Te venero’ he alternated voices with Rita Payés in an exchange between rap and bolero in which C. Tangana exposes himself singing regarding her vital journey, miseries and excesses. It’s another of his great claims: ‘El Madrileño’ is transparent and undresses without hesitation in his lyrics. The most acclaimed collaboration, by far, was that of Nathy Peluso in ‘Atheist’. They danced, did they pretend? seduce each other and sing a duet a song that, although not brilliant, sounds like Tangana from the first chord.
‘Nominao’, a much better song, is two melodies that are repeated almost in a loop. Either of the two might be the chorus, in an exercise in minimalist bobbin lace because, with hardly any instruments, the song was a battery, a guitar, the bass and the voice: a great composition buried in a record of hits. The largest of them, ‘Too many women’, made the ground under the Palace vibrate with its techno beat and electrifying energy before ending with a solitary violin.
There was time for everything, even to recreate ‘La Sobremesa’ from his famous concert at Tiny Desk. With everyone involved sitting next to him, Antonio Carmona, Kiko Veneno, the Child of Elche and other illustrious people sang a medley in which they played, among others, ‘Me Maten’, ‘No somos lokos’, ‘Ingobernable’ and ‘Noches de Bohemia’, with a curious change of script when Tangana sang ‘Even though you don’t know it ‘.
‘La Sobremesa’ was a complete visual spectacle. The color composition of each of the costumes, the placement of the musicians, some spotlights on the stage that accentuated the moments of emphasis of the lyrics, the objects on the table placed in perfect symmetry… all broadcast on the screen with a sharpness typical of a Tarantino movie. I didn’t know things like that might be done on stage. C. Tangana, who is smarter than hunger, has made his great virtue out of his musical shortcomings. He is an atypical showman, because he constantly gives up the spotlight and is seen enjoying the art of his colleagues.
The hits, also at the end. ‘I’m never here’, ‘Hong Kong’ (where were you Andrés?), ‘Before I died’, ‘You stopped loving me’ and ‘Un poison’ closed an epic show that threatens to forever renew the way we understand live music.
