Albert Pla, 35 years of delirium and tenderness

GironaAlbert Pla He is an immeasurable artist. One of those who escape any definition, style, or conventional trend that pigeonholes them. On stage, there's no one like him. He began singing in a bar in Jaén in 1989, and since then, he has been touring Catalonia, Spain, and Latin America for more than three decades with his concerts, shows, and performances. performances unclassifiable, Always provocative, yet endearing and magnetic, he balances irreverent banter with blunt truths. Now the singer is celebrating 35 years of career at the Strenes Festival in Girona (he was scheduled to perform in 2020, to commemorate his 30th birthday, but it was canceled due to the pandemic) with an extraordinary double concert on the steps of the cathedral.

Under the guise of a naive and voyeuristic artist, with a children's song voice and four reluctantly played guitar chords, Pla unfolds an extremely powerful and highly intelligent creative universe, filled with equal parts irony, delirium, and tenderness. In Girona, tracing a chronological journey narrated in the first person, he began singing the first songs of his youth, curled up in his seat, like Skeleton or the very famous Dad, I want to be a bullfighter. Then he gave way to the two great musicians who have accompanied him all these years: the guitarist Diego Cortés, genius of flamenco and rumba, with whom he sang the song of poisoned love in the monarchy of Letter to King Melchior, and Judit Farrés, keyboardist and DJ, who opened one of the most memorable moments of the night: Stub, he road trip psychedelic and very long like a cigarette that makes all the states of the USA explode one by one, in a kind of festive and cathartic requiem of each of the symbols of the American Dream.

Then, looking at the screen, Pla reviewed posters and videos of each of the shows and albums of these 35 years –"This is the best thing I've done," he said laughing at each one of them–. Until the final burst, now with two dancers on stage: starting with the fun song Religious experience, from the series The Messiah, from the Javis; the tribute to Lou Reed d'The wilder side of life'; I am a rebel, and Insolation, to end the radish lap pass Catalan revelry. Finally, after the applause, Pla returned to the stage, alone, to sing the beautiful dreamlike eulogy of Somiatruchas, almost whispered, before ending, among the audience, with the notes of Pee.

Albert Pla has complemented this special anniversary concert with an installation in the sewers on Carrer de la Força, which leads to the cathedral, where every night this week some of his most iconic songs ring out from the grates of the earth drains. "The sewers are cleaner and more honorable than this world," the artist declared.