Mosaic Festival: Kings of Convenience Concert, Esplanade Concert Hall, Thurs 18 Mar 2010

Erlend (or was it Eirik?) said they never have a set list, and instead talk to each other after each song to see what they felt like singing next (usually they have the same song in mind). So I guess you won't hear the exact same group of songs in the exact same order anywhere else but during Thursday's concert:

1. (missed this one)
2. 24-25
3. Love Is No Big Truth
4. I Don't Know What I Can Save You From (my favouritest KoC song, instrumental guitar part makes me swoon)
5. Peacetime Resistance (brilliant saxophone skatting from Erlend here)
6. Second to Numb
7. Power of Not Knowing
8. Mrs Cold
9. The Girl from Back Then
10. Rule My World ("...this one's for the people in Singapore...")
11. Me in You
12. Gold in The Air Of Summer
13. Thirteen (sang in sort of tribute to Alex Chilton of Big Star who just died this Wednesday) (if my note-taking is accurate this was their 13th song - spooky if it's not planned like they say they don't plan songs)
14. Know-How
15. (missed this one too, but KoC got the audiences up on their feet from this song onwards)
16. Misread
17. I'd Rather Dance With You
Encore
18. Homesick
19. Toxic Girl
20. Cayman Islands (this one came with popular demand from the audience, people have been randonly calling out this title all night long)

When KoC first performed at the 2006 Mosaic Festival, I absolutely adored them. The music was a dream, Erlend (with his too-small green tee) and Eirik were so cute and funny, the crowd practically worshipped every note emanating from their guitars/piano, and they even invited a group of audience (who had to battle the security guards) up onstage to dance with them during the last song. I thought it was probably the closest thing to Woodstock I would ever be a part of.

Back to Thursday's concert. (Photos below courtesy of KoC's relaxed no-photography-during-first-30-mins-only policy, so people started snapping away from 8pm sharp)

I have to confess. I was kinda underwhelmed. Still liked the music, the guys are still cool with sense of humour intact, crowd was still screaming their heads off... for some reason, I just never really got into the whole thing. I recognised a few songs, sang along to a couple of lines, but the songs seemed to be getting blurrily similar to me - at one point when they were strumming the intro to a song, I remember thinking to myself, "Wait a minute, haven't they already played this one?". And during the encore bit when the whole booked out concert hall of 1500+ people were close to bringing the roof down with their "woooooh"s and "I love you Erlend/Eirik!"s, I was more like, "OK I'm jealous. What are you guys so high about?".

Argh. I'm getting tired of this "it was great but I didn't get it" refrain. Has it really become impossible for me to properly enjoy a concert? Or is too much of a good thing, well, too much? Gonna spend money next few weeks on movies instead. SIFF coming soon anyway.