The White Birch

Update 17/01/2006: The band & its performance left me seriously underwhelmed: harmless music, devoid of original ideas, in fact rather replaceable with any other artist's music from this genre (and not nearly as touching as Sigur Rós' music, to which their songs bore a lot of resemblance to). The songs didn't lead anywhere & broke off way too abruptly most of the times -- they just didn't allow themselves to let it go. The few uptempo songs which they used to close the main set made several attempts to take off but managed to do so for only some very brief moments. So they had to send one of the members of the touring band back home & had to rearrange the material -- okay. But still the songs just didn't carry the evening enough. There was neither a trace of "Timothy's monster"'s brilliance & diversity nor of Sigur Rós' magic.

A comment from a friend of mine says it all: shortly before the end of the main set she asked me where we would go now for a serious set of rock music. The band was being nice & quiet & intimate but that certain disturbing & serious element to make it outstanding was missing.

Only cool thing about the show was the chick on the organ/keys. She looked damn hot & provided nice backing & occasional lead vocals as well as spacey keys (the organs/keys were intense throughout admittedly). Attentive audience, a bit posh 'n' hip for my taste though, as always at Mudd Club. Paid a tenner at the door -- doesn't feel like a wasted evening after all but I will most likely not go to see them again that soon.

I been checking out a lot of Norwegian bands over the years because of my love & passion for Motorpsycho (next up: Magnet & Cloroform on January 28 at the very same venue). There were some highlights, there were many failures. Just goes to show it's so fucking hard to surpass that greatest of all Norwegian/Scandinavian bands!

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I am going to see the Norwegian band The White Birch (from Oslo) at Berlin’s Mudd Club tonight. They have been recommended to me by a Motorpsycho pen pal of mine who insists their music gives him a “Timothy’s monster”-like vibe. Their latest effort “Come up for air” (2005) has been produced & mixed by non other than Helge Sten (aka Deathprod.) at Audio Virus Lab (where many a Motorpsycho-track was mixed). And of course, when doing some random Googling in order to learn more about them I quickly noticed they were the ones wo contributed their very own version of “Demon box” to the Motorpsycho-tribute “Self-indulgent mono minds”! The song-samples on their site sound more like a lighter, more accessible, pop-induced version of Sigur Rós, though. Motorpsycho-resemblance or not, they certainly seem to be a promising act & I am really curious about tonight’s show.

The remaining tour calls at:

16.01.2006 Berlin, Mudd Club
17.01.2006 Hamburg, Tanzhalle
18.01.2006 Bamberg, Morph
19.01.2006 CH- Bern, Morph
20.01.2006 CH- Düdingen, Bad Bonn
21.01.2006 A- Ebensee, Kino

The White Birch live in Essen, Germany, 11.01.2006:




Pictures taken from this concert-review, see also the news-item from Intro.de about that show & the tour in general!