The festival is located in the customs of Porto, on the riverside. The view is amazing and the line-up is usually very good. It's a band-oriented weekend festival and, we really need that. Today, most of the big stars of the festival are DJ's or solo artists that most of the music is previously recorded.
Anyway, the big name this year were Bush, Emir Kusturica, Bastille and Franz Ferdinand.
Kusturica was great, a big, funny and very enjoyable gypsy party and Bush were good also.
But the best show was, undoubtedly, Franz Ferdinand.
The Scottish band are, in my opinion, one of the best bands around since their very first album.
Their songs are amazing, full of energy, full of rock and, through the years they evolved, and got a bit more keyboard oriented (although they are a guitar-band). Actually, the fact that know they have more keyboards only works even better. The new songs are more complex, more deep, more electronic, with more sound and less empty spaces.
This was their first concert of the year and the second in Portugal with the new two members.
Well, what to say about the show? It was perfect, probably the best concert I saw since last time I saw Suede.
They played a career spanning setlist (with 7 songs from their debut album!). The hits were all there and sounding as fresh as ever. Take Me Out is always the high point of course. Jacqueline is a total banger. This Fire was the perfect ending of the show, with a lot of interaction between the band and the crowd. As Alex asked, we were Feeling The Love Go, as he asked us to, on the song with the same name.
Then the set is always full of classics. Do You Want To and Ulysses are always super powerful.
The only thing I really didn't like was the end they shorted up the song Always Ascending. It's one of my favourites from the new album and it's a shame they didn't do a longer instrumental outro part. The same for Lucid Dreams, they performed a version of the song with a little different melody and cut off the electronic end.
Lazy Boy was, and is, an instant classic.
They even played Right Action for the first time in years and, played Black Tuesday, a totally new song, it was its live debut. Special.
From the performance, you could feel that the band feels good in Portugal. They are very welcome here, and, a lot of their songs play every night on the alternative pubs.
Franz are one of the best bands in world.In studio they continually record 5 stars albums and they are true monster on the stage.
And a quick note:
If you kinda like bands like FF, but you don't want to waste money on concerts that you think you won't know every song, just grab your money, and go! Concerts are almost always fun, and it's much better than to be sitting at home! GO TO GIGS!
