Live at the Gasometer

Loreen: The long haul is the supreme discipline

First Vienna appearance in ten years: Loreen is a natural live phenomenon, but sometimes she quickly fizzles out due to her own reputation.

(Bild: Andreas Graf)

Only around 1500 fans gathered at the Gasometer in Vienna on Friday evening to watch two-time ESC winner Loreen in concert. Despite a hard-working stage show, a versatile vocal performance and thick beats, the pale aftertaste remains that "full-length" must mean more than two hits and a lot of enthusiasm.

Success is an obligation. This also applies to the Swede Loreen, who was the second person in the history of the competition to win the Song Contest twice after the Irishman Johnny Logan. In 2012, she not only enchanted audiences in Baku with the song "Euphoria", perhaps the strongest ESC song of this millennium, but also showed political courage in the heated Afghanistan conflict. The triumph was repeated in 2023 with the less exciting but no longer quite as popular track "Tattoo", which had her and her Swedish homeland cheering once again. Alongside Conchita Wurst, Loreen stands for cohesion, love, LGBTQ rights and realpolitik activism like no other ESC personality. The fact that, like so many other artists, she sided with Palestine in the Gaza conflict and even refused to present the trophy at the ESC in 2024 if Israel were to win, brought a striking ambivalence to the artist's interpersonally clean vita for the first time.

Arrival via portal
However, the much-anticipated performance in Vienna's Gasometer clearly missed the big crowd. Only 1500 spectators found their way to Simmering on Friday evening, the hall was not even half full. And this despite the fact that Loreen last set foot on Austrian soil in 2015, but then only to present herself at the Life Ball. The last few tours have purposefully bypassed the Alpine republic. Whether there will be a quick reunion after the poorly attended gig is doubtful. When Loreen enters the stage slightly late, the audience is at operating temperature after two pre-acts and in joyful anticipation. Percussion and drumset are set up on the left, electronics and keyboard on the right, while the master herself strides comfortably across the stage after an expansive intro to stand in front of the portal-like, slanted circle, which conveys a kind of arrival of the extraterrestrial.

As a two-time song contest winner, Loreen is first and foremost a visual phenomenon. Her long black hair billows in the fan wind, while the fringe on her forehead lends her a mystical air. The leather glitter robe is skin-tight, and the distinctive fingernail gloves have long since become an international trademark. A keyboard and electric piano player and a drummer are all she needs for the live setting, the rest comes from the band. With "Jupiter Drive" and "Gravity", Loreen gets the evening off to a galactic start and sets the tone. Somewhere between eruptive Pratersauna techno and decelerated melancholy, Loreen moves in different musical genres, but always focuses on emotions as the lowest common denominator. Vocally mostly intense, between breathy and wildly escalating, the sound often degenerates into an effectless extra.

Euphoria and static
A Loreen show is more minimalist than some people imagine. She works exclusively with white light, which is usually projected upwards from the floor with stage fog to emphasize the diffuse overall impression. Loreen herself is a master of gestures without moving much. While her feet remain constantly on the ground, she contorts herself cat-like into all possible positions and immediately takes command. The cheers during songs such as the relatively new number "Warning Signs" or the ballad "Hate The Way I Love You" are euphoric, but as the set progresses, the stage design and performance wear thin. While the Song Contest goes over the top visually with its budget, the artist naturally has to budget differently on her own tour. The stage design remains static, the lighting unchanged and Loreen's immobility permanent.

What can no longer be changed in the surroundings must then be drowned out by the power of the music. Like so many ESC winners, Loreen never really got her feet on the ground away from the competition. The last studio album was almost eight years ago and even though various songs were strongly produced and well thought out in terms of content, there has been no big bang in Loreen's solo career so far. Her loyal ESC audience celebrated the Viennese performance fervently, but outside of this bubble, only a few heads could be seen in the hall. But the beginnings would have been good. The gentle opening "Dreams", for example, is a compositional fable that builds to a sweeping crescendo as it progresses. When Loreen is not singing, she stands in the portal circle like a mixture of the "James Bond Intro" and Alice Cooper on the cover of his cult album "Trash", waiting for the next cue or simply posing impressively. Austria's ESC hopeful this year, JJ, also likes this and happily dances and films along.

Failure in the supreme discipline
The Swede reduces communication with the audience to a minimum until, after just under an hour of waiting, the two songs that the majority of the audience have been waiting for come on. Even 13 years later, "Euphoria" still proves to be an impressively clubby highlight, and the energy of "Tattoo" is captivating right from the start. So the fun is almost over after less than 70 minutes, until the total length is further reduced. A short review of the state of the world and the extra-long encore "Fire Blue" increase the quantity of the evening, but not necessarily the quality. As is so often the case with ESC triumphants, a concert fails because it is simply not quite enough over the long haul. Staging a top song in front of a bombastic stage can lead to the show of a lifetime - but writing an entire album well, or filling a concert evening with the right arc of suspense, enthusiasm and strong songs, requires a different level of experience and routine. Despite her likeability, stage design and songs, this is where Loreen ultimately fails. Filling an evening is the supreme discipline.