Love of Lesbian say goodbye to Barcelona "see you soon"

Barcelona"This is a concert that justifies the narrative of a band with 25 years of history," said the lead singer of Love of Lesbian, Santi Balmes, a while before going out on the Estrella Damm stage at Bogatell beach in Barcelona, the most crowded one of the La Mercè festival. Love of Lesbian are calling it quits, or taking an indefinite break in accordance with musical newspeak. They still have about ten performances scheduled in Spain and Mexico, but Saturday's at Bogatell was the last one in Barcelona.

"For us it is a farewell, the last big concert in Barcelona," commented guitarist Julián Saldarriaga. It was logical, then, to expect that the emotion would condition a performance that began with Nadie por las calles and Cuando no me ves and which almost an hour and a half later ended with Los toros en la Wii (Fantástico) and Club de fans de John Boy, while some drones illuminated the sky with the messages "LOL loves BCN", and "BCN loves LOL" (where loves was a red heart). In fact, listening to the repertoire they were performing, one could look for encrypted messages about the end of Love of Lesbian, such as when in 1999 Balmes sings that "there is no longer any desire to continue the show", that "he just wants to be a spectator" and when at the end of the song he invokes Jeanette's Porque te vas. And it is possible that the emotion made the musicians be a bit tense. Santi Balmes brought to the stage all the tricks that have made him such a unique showman, like the top hat and the vest that seems like a tribute to the magician Juan Tamariz in Cuando no me ves (and later the glasses with the words fuck you stamped on the lenses), but he struggled to live up to the audience's enthusiasm. It was after 1999 that stage and beach began to be synchronized, and then yes, until the end.

The sound was big, wide-ranging, and featured a brass section, the trick that makes Love of Lesbian sound like The Cure with a trumpet. And the piano and brass would just as quickly throw a cabaret party in Me amo as they would pay homage to pop classics in Manifiesto delirista. "The atmosphere is heating up," said Balmes after Algunes plantes, which is Love of Lesbian dancing with Blur. And immediately after, he announced the presence of a "distinguished resident of Barcelona, the very honorable Manolo García!". "Honorable, no! And I'm from Poblenou," replied the singer of El Último de la Fila, full of character. Together they sang, more or less in harmony, Incendios de nieve, the paradise of the lo-lo-los,and La hermandad. And as happens at every Love of Lesbian concert for a couple of years now, Balmes reminded the audience that "not taking a stand is a fatal way of doing politics in these times when the far right is coming (...), the fascists who present their program in Spanish and those who present it in Catalan, because they exist too".

The final part of the concert brought a second surprise, the collaboration on Ahí donde solíamos gritar by Xantal Rodríguez, the singer of Remei de Ca la Fresca, a band that Balmes recommended without sparing any praise. "No to the expansion of El Prat airport," shouted Rodríguez at the end of the song, taking advantage of the massive crowd and the emotional warmth of the last leg of the performance.

"This is the last one and it is yours," said Santi Balmes before closing the night with Club de fans de John Boy. While they received the audience's ovation, the words See you soon could be read at the back of the stage... An indefinite but not definitive farewell?