For the first time in their career, Puma Blue stopped in Spain, with dates in Madrid and Barcelona, to present their latest and greatest work, ‘Croak Dream’. It has taken him a long time to come to our country, because if anything was demonstrated at the sold-out concert at Café Berlin this week, it is that the Londoner has a good handful of loyal followers.
The artist came out on stage amid a sea of smoke and red lights, accompanied by his four musicians. Next, he held a walkie-talkie close to his microphone, generating a disturbing hiss, which gave way to the first notes of the very Radiohead ‘Croak Dream’. If there was one thing that characterized the evening, it was, without a doubt, the atmospheric ambiance that they established from the beginning, plunging the audience into a state of trance that was difficult to escape. Jacob Allen’s androgynous voice emerged as a seductive and suggestive weapon; His peculiar falsetto shone on compositions loaded with layers and layers of sound.
The setlist alternated indistinctly both songs from their latest album and from their previous projects (although there was no space for their long-form debut ‘In Praise of Shadows’). Despite the slight stylistic differences between them, the artist knew how to adapt each of the songs to the trip-hop psychedelic tones of his most recent album, making everything sound as if it belonged to him. The feeling was like attending a concert at the Roadhouse from the third season of Twin Peaks. Such was the level of immersion it generated, that Allen did not address the audience until well into the 40 minutes of the show.
When he did, people became more animated, but the artist’s subsequent interactions with the audience remained timid. The only goal was to connect through music. And it was more than accomplished, not only thanks to the presence of the singer and guitarist, but also to the good work of his band, who made gold from their respective instruments: bass, drums, synthesizer, keyboard and saxophone. The most powerful moments of the night were reserved precisely for the purely instrumental passages. The sax on ‘Oil Slick’ and ‘Jaded’ sounded particularly glorious.
For last, the Brit saved some of his most beloved songs, from EPs and singles that came out between 2017 and 2018, such as the bedroom pop with jazz touches of ‘Moon Undah Water’, or his most popular song to date, ‘(She’s) Just a Phase’, after which he left the stage. It didn’t take long for him to go out again to the warmth of the attendees, who made him feel very supported at all times, sending a clear message: Madrid cannot be missing from the next tours. The jazz rock of ‘Bruise Cruise’, from his EP ‘Blood Loss’, put the final touch on a concert with a marked sensory character, one of those that invites you to forget everything and simply let yourself go.
