paris – bolachas.org

House of Wolves @ Divan du Monde (Paris) – 24/05/2013

House of Wolves represents the direct translation of Villalobos, the Hispanic name of the owner of this musical project. After self-releasing his first album, Fold in the Wind, in 2011, almost two years later the album is distributed by the French label Fargo. This was the bridge to the inclusion of House of Wolves in the first edition of Fargo Rock City Festival in Paris. Divan du Monde was a bit empty, but it was somehow expectable, as we had Villagers and Deerhunter that played in two neighbouring venues in the same night…

Alone on stage with his guitar, Rey timidly started the concert with “Jealous”, showing everyone that his voice is as amazing live as it is on record. “Flight” came next and it was probably the song that filled most my heart with positive feelings (“Baby, you’re the one, baby, baby, you’re the one…”). The highlight of the concert was the opening song of Fold in the Wind, where Rey spreads a vintage tune and the sweet request “kiss me like if the 50’s…”.

Even without other instruments but the guitar, we all enjoyed the songs of this little man with a cool squared shirt that landed in Paris directly from Los Angeles. Maybe because the jetlag, the concert was too short, with only 8 songs… It was early and everybody was in concentrated in the songs, so it would be perfect to listen the entire album. At the end of the show, Rey came down directly among the public, handshaking almost everybody in the room. It was the perfect end of a nice and very intimate show.

You can check House of Wolves’ beautiful album on his bandcamp. Please try to catch him next time that he shows up in Europe!

RBC

I really admire young people doing good stuff and Young Man is a project that fits in my patterns of admiration and respect. Young Man is the alter ego of Colin Caulfield, a 20-something-year-old boy that presented himself in Paris this week, in a floating venue called Petit Bain.

If you had been following Young Man, I am sure that you noticed that he had been growing up. Colin gained some visibility thanks to a set of videos that he posted on youtube covering some artists like Beach House, Grizzly Bear or the huge Deerhunter. Boy, his first EP, saw the light of day in 2010 and afterwards he challenged himself to record an album trilogy in 18 months. The first album of this trilogy was Ideas of Distance, recorded in 2011 and this year he released the second album, which is ironically called Vol.1. In Vol.1 Colin shows to the world his passage from the adolescence to the adult life, a very important moment on his musical trajectory. Vol.1 is also the first album that he recorded on a studio and with a full band: Emmett Conway on the guitar, Joe Baley on the bass, Dylan Andrews on the drums and Jeff Graupner on the synthesizers.

All these folks came with Colin from Chicago to Paris, playing the concert at Petit Bain. I am a total mess when I try to identify the music genre of any band, but I never doubt when dream pop is the right answer. In fact, the entire concert was a beautiful experience of dream pop, in a way so much stronger than we can feel in the albums. Young Man played the right formula: the conversion of the melodic songs in the albums to intense themes in the concert was very wise.

The concert had only 8 songs, all of them long and perfectly connected. They started with “Fate”, a track off Vol.1, and after that they visited Boy and Ideas of Distance with “Just a Growin’” and “Felt”. In addition, they also played some new songs that are not recorded yet. Yeah, they played a bit of all of their work only with 8 songs.

I would like to have listened more songs of Vol.1 though. I really missed the beautiful tracks “Thoughts”, “By and By” and “21”. It would be great if they had stayed longer on board of Petit Bain and had played more songs.

Alone in the stage, Colin said au revoir to Paris with “Directions”, the joyful ending song of Vol.1. Colin, who lived and studied in Paris during a few months, started this song in French but eventually he switched to English, just after promised that he will sing the French version on his next visit to Paris. “I don’t know where I’m going. Am I already there? Is it already there?” repeated Colin at the end of the concert, as an exposition of some doubts of a young man that is taking his own directions on his musical route.

RBC

Setlist:

1. Fate (vol.1)

2. Just a Growin’

3. Felt

4. Unfair

5. Do

6. School

—-

7. Time

8. Directions