Sylvan Esso. Paradiso, Amsterdam. Summer 2023.
Sylvan Esso — not in Amsterdam, but New York, which is not as good…
Two friends were in town, visiting from Copenhagen, not just because Amsterdam is a superior city, but also to see a band called Sylvan Esso, in Paradiso. When they told me there were still a few tickets left, I climbed aboard.
I’m very glad I did.
I knew Sylvan Esso to the extent that one of the above friends had introduced me, so I’d heard and enjoyed a couple of albums.
I liked them, but I didn't know the words to any of their songs, and I had no particular expectations from the gig. Which is always great, if you can manage it.
Also, despite being sorely tempted, I didn't take any drugs. This is good. It means that nobody — not even me — can deny or diminish the remarkable power and profundity of what took place.
I feel sure it must have happened to me before, at some festival or other, but for the moment, for the life of me, I can't pinpoint any other specific occasion in my life where live music has reduced me to such a wonderfully weeping helpless mess.
…
Sylvan Esso are Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn. They’re American, and a couple, but they got together romantically long after they started making music. As I recall it, they did two or three songs at Paradiso before Amelia first spoke to the audience. And one of the first things she said was, “Thank you for giving us this job.”
And the joy and radiant sincerity of her gratitude in that moment, was the first time I think I felt something crack inside.
…
Years ago, I became briefly obsessed with collective effervescence. I even tried to go around the world in 80 festivals, seeking out instances of concentrated fluorescent bliss, but I lacked the confidence to make a decent fist of it.
Still, the point is: human energy … fizzing together and aimed in the same direction, focused on some wonderful example of artistic expression, some thrumming, glistening, uniquely brilliant fusion of creativity and talent — when all those energies align, something profoundly powerful occurs.
The song that drove me over the edge was called Uncatena. A line in that song — Did you ever say…? — was repeated a great deal during the live performance and I’ve no idea how or why, but the hypnotic repetition, the harmonies, the looping voices, the singular piercing gorgeousness of Amelia’s voice and her presence, all of it delivered with such sincerity, such powerful authenticity, and such a wholehearted passionate embrace of the energy in the room … I guess it just chimed with something within me, and I melted.
The extent to which Amelia was connected to the audience, and to the music she was making, was electrifying. My female companions were apparently equally enamoured of Nick’s performance, but personally I was hypnotised by Amelia, and the way she just seemed to pour herself into the audience.
It seems to me that this visceral instinctive interaction between performer and audience, when it reaches a state of euphoric flow — as I guess it does in any truly great gig — is almost unbeatably transcendent. It’s a little taste, isn’t it, of the interconnectedness of all things; that mythical yet undeniable oneness that we all believe in (if we know it to be true), and that we all strive for (if we know what’s good for us).
It’s how we evolve.
…
And then came the end, and rather than the hectic banger I was hoping for, the encore closer took me in another direction. Make It Easy is a haunting repetitive number with a Laurie Anderson robot-voice vibe and a building intensity that sunk its hands slowly into my brain before ripping me asunder like an unset jelly. Not what I was expecting at all.
Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, somewhere…
I’m so happy this experience fell into my lap. It was one of my favourite gigs of all time, much aided, incidentally, by the intimate grandiosity of Paradiso, where, by the way, they have all played.
All of them.
