MEO Kalorama 2024
Parque da Bela Vista, Lisbon, Portugal
29th – 31st August 2024
An artful new addition to the European festival landscape, at the intersection of indie rock, pop and electronica
On its social media channels, MEO Kalorama claims to be “the last big music festival of the summer”. This makes you wonder; what’s involved in book-ending the festival season? How do you put together a lineup that we haven’t already seen across Europe in the preceding months – and, as a fledgling event in only its third year, how do you justify another festival in an already crowded market?
As it turns out, Kalorama has a number of trump cards to play. The first is the location; Lisbon’s aptly-named Parque da Bela Vista, which perches on a hill atop the Portuguese capital and, this late in the summer, avails the 100,000+ in attendance a glimpse of some truly gorgeous sunsets over the city as each of the festival’s three nights get underway. This part of the park is shaped like a natural bowl, allowing for unobstructed views of the main MEO stage regardless of position; it also means that, at the bowl’s opposite end, second San Miguel stage overhangs the audience at the peak of a hill, quirkily meaning that the further away you are, the better your perspective.
Day one of the festival offers the first opportunity for it to showcase the eclectic blend of styles on what is a sprawling and ambitious lineup; early highlights include a blistering set by much-hyped New York post-punk outfit Monobloc, who are followed on the San Miguel stage by Gossip, on typically raucous form. Meanwhile, late-in-the-day loss from the lineup of Fever Ray, owing to Karin Dreijer’s hospitalisation for bacterial pneumonia, places more of an onus on Massive Attack to step up and deliver on the MEO stage.
They do so spectacularly; the Bristol trip hop legends have pulled out all the stops for what is one of only a short run of European dates this year. Whilst the set spans their 36-year career, it couldn’t possibly feel more rooted in the present-day, scored through with a political urgency underlined by visuals from esteemed documentarian Adam Curtis. They bring an all-star lineup of special guests, too, including Young Fathers, who return to the MEO stage twelve months on from their own show here to lead searing versions of Gone, Minipoppa and Voodoo In My Blood.
There’s also a rare appearance from Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins, who celebrates her 63rd birthday with stunning renditions of Song To The Siren and one of Massive Attack’s biggest hits, Teardrop. Another of those, Unfinished Sympathy, sounds especially huge with Deborah Miller on lead vocals, while the show’s most poignant moment arrives with the dedication of the atmospheric classic Safe From Harm to the people of Gaza; the Palestinian flag lights up the Lisbon night on the band’s enormous lighting rig, to huge cheers. Afterwards, Maryland-born, Liverpool-based singer-songwriter Jalen Ngonda provides the ideal warm-down on the Lisboa stage, perhaps so named because it Sita at the bottom of a hill the provides a stirring view across the city’s skyline – an ideal setting for Ngonda’s effortlessly smooth blues and soul alchemy.
Moving away from the poppier, dancer opening night, day two offers up an embarrassment of riches for indie rock fans – and, mercifully, is not plagued with the same admission issues as night one, which saw long queues stretching for nearly a mile between Bela Vista metro station and the park itself as fans sought to exchange tickets for wristbands. The Kills set the tone early on the San Miguel stage, their last show of a European tour that has reacquainted continental audiences with their smoky, blues-inflected garage rock. Alison Mosshart has the sort of stage presence most singers would kill for, but it’s in the broiling tension between her menacing vocals and Jamie Hince’s staccato, machine-gun riffs that the band’s magic really lies.
Across the field, meanwhile, is the chance to catch English Teacher on the cosy Lisboa stage in front of a small audience – perhaps for the last time, with their set coming just days before their Mercury Prize triumph. They offer compelling evidence as to why This Could Be Texas might just be the finest album of 2024, whilst also closing with a cover of New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down as a nod to the evening’s headliners.
Back over on San Miguel, something of a dream double bill for alt-rock fans of a certain vintage; Ben Gibbard pulls double duty as he performs both albums he released in 2003, his annus mirabilis.
Up first is Death Cab For Cutie’s Transatlanticism, which remains a handsome exercise in emotional literacy, here sounding as good as it ever has courtesy of Death Cab’s expanded lineup; the hardcore among those gathered will have particularly enjoyed hearing the moody Lightness and breezy portraiture of Death Of An Interior Decorator, neither of which usually appear on Death Cab setlists. The highlight, though, is a climactic take on We Look Like Giants that sees Gibbard on a second drum kit, trading beats with Jason McGerr during the track’s epic breakdown. There are hints throughout that Gibbard, in the voice of his life, is enjoying the role of frontman more than ever, eschewing his guitar on the album’s title track to deliver its searing yearning in a style more suited to a pop star than an indie rocker.
The reason for this subtle shift becomes clear when he returns, after a fifteen-minute break, to front The Postal Service, the “imaginary band” that produced one of the great indie pop albums of the 21st century in Give Up, before disappearing. Gibbard’s collaborator, Jimmy Tamborello, is present and correct on synth wizardry, while Jenny Lewis acts as Gibbard’s foil tin guitar and vocals and Death Cab’s Dave Depper chips in as a multi-instrumentalist. For an album that was recorded in isolation and pieced together after the fact, it’s stunning to witness it so vibrant and full of life onstage; tracks like Sleeping In and Clark Gable becoming genuine pop anthems. Meanwhile, the screwball wit of Gibbard-Lewis duet Nothing Better might be the highlight. This is The Postal Service’s penultimate show on this tour – maybe ever, as they seldom tour and have emphatically ruled out any more music. It is a coup for Kalorama to have hosted it, one of only five gigs anywhere in the world outside of North America.
A band that does have a studio future is LCD Soundsystem, tonight’s headliners; fans scurry down the hill from San Miguel to the MEO valley in time to catch the infectious groove of opener Us v. Them. It seems like a trick of the mind now that the New Yorkers were ever split up, and even stranger that not only did it happen, but that frontman James Murphy sought to draw a line under the band in such dramatic fashion, quite literally making a big song and dance of it with a documentary film and huge final concert a Madison Square Garden. They’ve gone from strength to strength as a live outfit since reconvening in 2016 and are on the form of their lives in Lisbon, returning to the city where they played one of their longest-ever shows back in 2018.
Tonight’s is more compact, at 95 minutes, but still a masterclass in melding rock and electronica to glorious effect. That there is room for both atmospheric simmer (You Wanted A Hit), irrepressible groove (Tribulations) and beautifully rumination (Someone Great) is a testament to the group’s ability as stylistic shape-shifters, and there may not be a more euphoric closing hat-trick of songs on any setlist than Dance Yourself Clean, New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down and All My Friends. Plus, the seamlessness with which new cut New Body Rhumba is slipped in suggests that their long-awaited fifth LP, likely out in 2025, is shaping up to be classic LCD.
The closing day of the festival throws up maybe its most diverse set of artists yet, starting out with on early set on Lisboa from South African sensation Moonchild Sannelly, whose signature blend of electro, dance and hyperpop is joy incarnate. Later, there are huge headline sets from Brits record-breaker RAYE and Afrobeats titan Burna Boy, but some of the most interesting turns are to be found on the smaller stages. Just weeks after playing a massive outdoor hometown show in Leeds, Yard Act are in front of a much more intimate crowd late tonight on Lisboa, but deliver in scintillating style, particularly on closer The Trench Coat Museum, which melds all of their influences – The Fall, Talking Heads, New Order – into a gloriously witty paean to frontman James Smith’s garment of choice.
Afterwards, they’re followed by Yves Tumor, whose electrifying is a testament to the conviction with which they have pulled off their gradual transition from purveyor of dark electronica to glam rocker for the modern age. Such a cutting-edge set feels like a natural note for the third edition of MEO Kalorama to sign off on. This might be the last big festival of the summer, but in offering an ambitious, genre-fluid lineup, it’s one of the most important, too.
~
Words by Joe Goggins
Photos: Rita Seixas, Rodrigo Simas, Hugo Moreira, Matias Garcia
We have a small favour to ask. Subscribe to Louder Than War and help keep the flame of independent music burning. Click the button below to see the extras you get!
