Steve 'N' Seagulls
Some bands arrive in town with guitars, amps and a serious-looking press release. Steve ’N’ Seagulls arrive with banjos, fiddles, acoustic guitars, double bass, a healthy disregard for musical boundaries and the ability to make a Metallica riff sound like it has just wandered in from a Finnish barnyard.
The Finnish five-piece are heading back to Spain this October, bringing their The Dark Side Of The Moo tour to Rock City Valencia on Friday 23 October, with doors opening at 20:00. Advance tickets are €25 plus booking fees, rising to €30 at the door.
And if you've somehow managed to avoid the Steve ’N’ Seagulls phenomenon until now, prepare to have your musical expectations thrown into a woodchipper.
The band first emerged around 2010 with a simple but brilliantly unlikely idea: take some of the biggest songs in rock and metal history and rebuild them using the sounds of bluegrass, newgrass and Finnish folk. What could possibly go wrong?
Their videos have now clocked up more than 346 million YouTube views, while their peculiar brand of acoustic mayhem has taken them across more than 30 countries and four continents, including appearances at some of the world's major festivals.
Their latest adventure, The Dark Side Of The Moo, continues that tradition while pushing the band's own material and reworked classics into the same wonderfully strange territory. Expect virtuoso musicianship, huge riffs wearing rural disguises and songs that can leave you wondering whether you're watching a bluegrass festival, a metal gig or the world's most dangerous village fête. The answer, naturally, is all three.
For Valencia, the setting couldn't be much more appropriate than Rock City, the Almàssera venue at Carrer dels Coheters 6 that has become one of the city's essential stops for touring rock and metal.
Rock City has a knack for putting bands where they belong: close to the crowd, loud enough to make the beer vibrate and without the cavernous distance that can turn a great rock show into an arena exercise. And Steve ’N’ Seagulls are precisely the sort of band that should be experienced up close.
This isn't background music. It's a full-contact collision between genres, with the musicianship doing as much of the heavy lifting as the comedy. One minute you're hearing something that sounds like it belongs beside a campfire in the Finnish wilderness; the next, a familiar metal monster comes stomping through the door wearing a checked shirt.
The Valencia date is part of a six-date Spanish run that also takes in Santiago de Compostela, Bilbao, Zaragoza, Granada and Seville, with Rock City sitting right in the middle of the band's October assault.
So, if your musical tastes normally demand that bluegrass stays bluegrass and metal stays metal, this may be the night to reconsider the rules. Bring your friends, bring your sense of humour and prepare for some seriously impressive musicians to completely rearrange your idea of what a rock show is supposed to sound like.
For tickets and more information: Rock City
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