We told you not to miss it and I hope you blindly followed our orders.
When was the last time you went to a gig and had a reception with free fruit salad on a stick and plethora of drinks to choose from? Lugar Comum, the promoters from the Coimbra show, really did their best to make sure you were in the right mood to properly enjoy some Sonny & the Sunsets, despite the rainy and windy weather outside. In the beginning of the concert, the band sounded a bit sloppy though, indicating that perhaps it wasn’t a very good idea for us to sit down on the ground on a non-seated venue. Bands don’t soundcheck thinking about people sitting on the ground, you know. In spite of that, there’s nothing not to love about songs like “Reflections on Youth” or “Love Among Social Animals”.
Then, the band switched from a 3 piece to a two-guitar, four-pieced full fledged band, moved away from the garagy sound and turned into an unlikely country band (well, at least for those who were there for their earlier output and forgot to listen to their latest effort, Longtime Companion. “My Mind Messed Up” was then played, and I can say I could go home satisfied right after that one, a song with an ability of blowing off the water every song played before it and probably my favorite song of the year so far. “Dried Blood” and “Sea of Darkness” also helped turning the concert into a southern cowboy party for some minutes, although we were all sitting on the ground like well behaved indie kids.
From one certain moment on, we felt like we were just having a party in someone’s living room, with four of our friends playing some songs for us. That moment was when Sonny invited Jerónimo from Birds are Indie (also a member of the promoters’ team) to translate for us his story about miners who were digging for emotions and found giant reserves of love… and then THEY sealed off the mines. Then the band proceeded to play “I See the Void” from Longtime Companion and we knew everything would be alright.
“Death Cream” was probably the most hilarious moment of the evening, mainly because everyone (Sonny Smith included) would start laughing for no reason everytime he stopped before the chorus. I was expecting more country goodness to finish off the night, but that was over. Nice way to tell everyone ‘come back next time if you want to see “Pretend you Love Me” being played’. Sure. We’ll all be there.