Blues Pills, blues rock band from Sweden, arrived on 23rd March 2016 in Wolfsburg, Germany. At first, on the one hand I was surprised about the variety of the people in the audience: The ages diverged from children to well gray-haired married couples and the scenes scratched from beer-drinking, burping metalheads to wine-drinking, noble suits. That’s a combination of different types of people I’d never seen at one single place before. But in the other hand I shouldn’t be surprised about it. Either someone like this old-school flair of rock or just not, because it’s independent on the personal general taste of music I think. You see, Blues Pills fascinate a wide spectrum of people with their music and I got mesmerized at this evening, too.
Blues Pills played a round about 80 minute long setlist full of atmospheric tracks. I could imagine how people felt in past concerts like Woodstock Festival or similar with its mesmerizing sound and music. Just from the beginning, the sound was amazing clear, pure and perfectly mixed. You could hear everything, really everything and this was quite impressive. At first, the guitar player Dorian Sorriaux is a crazy guy. He played efficiently but never strayed too far from his own station on the left. But he mixed his guitar sound with hypnotic effects in a fine way, at the right moments and I didn’t had the feeling that he ever did any single mistake while he sink into his guitar-playing delirium full of passion. I could feel the passion by the frontwoman Elin Larsson, too. She has an incredibly powerful, soulful voice which she presented at the song “Devil Man” especially. The part of movement or emotions which could be missed at Dorian, Elin embodied with her performance. She dance while singing or playing her headless tambourine the whole time and carried the people in front of the stage along. This all was of course backed by Bassist Zack Anderson and Drummer André Kvarnström in a wonderful four-way interplay.
This band obviously love the 60s/70s, the indulgent interplay between musicians who really dig a jam mid song and allow it to grow into an organic masterpiece. The wonderful and powerful voice, the psychedelic guitar riffs and the grooving synergy of bass and drums of Blues Pills are a unique combination everyone who loves rock and/or blues should have experienced. The whole show is utterly hypnotic like I said it is very much 70’s rock and I’m sure this band will go their way and fascinate our present musical society.