EL CACO (Live)

at John Dee, Oslo, Norway, April 8, 2005

These three scoundrels seem to get it all these days, good reviews on their latest album The Search, great playtime on their latest video ”Someone New,” and they seem to be on everybody’s lips lately. So expectations were very high for Norway’s all new pride and joy.

Supporting El Caco was Plywood from outside Oslo. Both Plywood and El Caco seem to have been around forever to the locals, and that’s probably why John Dee, the concert hall, was packed tonight. Starting off being polite, the fans kind of just stood there nodding their heads during Plywood’s performance, but after a few beers and getting in the mood with El Caco, people really let their hair down.

Starting off with one of their new songs, “Leaving,” singer Øyvind Osa sounded a bit weak. Maybe he was saving himself for song number two, “Small Hours,” because on this one he really gave it all. Now that Mr. Osa has dyed his hair blond, it’s scary to see how much he resembles a certain Mr. Cobain (R.I.P). A small man with a big voice.

Going on with another of their new songs, “Substitute”, which it definitely one of many highlights from their new album. It got a great reception from the audience, but unfortunately those “little things” from their CD production got somewhat lost in their live performance.

Another highlight this evening was, of course, performing “Someone New,” their new hit single, which actually sounded better live than on the album, with a tad more character. If they had managed the same energy from this hit during the rest of their faster tracks, this could have been a perfect gig. Slowing down the pace for beautiful new tunes like “Dislocated” and “Underneath” sure gave credit, and showed a more varied El Caco.

The sound system didn’t really seem to be on El Caco’s side tonight… the vocals collapsed a bit into the rest of the music at times, and the bass sounds sometimes killed the guitar, but still the guys gave the fans 19 songs, which is an unusually high amount of songs being that they only have released three albums.

They seemed content on stage, even if poor drummer Thomas Fredriksen seemed to fog down in the excessive mist on stage, and the guitar player Anders Gjesti; with the coolest beaded beard in the building, never said a word, nor smiled. Luckily for El Caco, they play extremely well, have a hard core group of fans, and an extremely charming singer, so the audience almost didn’t want to leave, even after 19 songs.