SPIRIT CARAVAN and Beaver - Stengade 30, København 11/22/00 50 kroner
From Aural Innovations #14 (January 2001)
I was looking forward to Spirit Caravan a lot. Jug fulla Sun was one of my favorite CDs from last year. It would be a poor night for the bands as far as audience. When Beaver started playing there were like 15 people. Only about 25 were there later for SC. Anyway, before Beaver started Ralph and I had a nice chat with Wino. You know how mean these guys look on the CD, wow… well in person they are really nice, kind people. Quite surprising. He was very very cool. Anyway, Beaver played a very solid set with several new songs. They opened with Tarmac and this was followed by Static. For those who don't know the band is a 4 piece with a female drummer. The 2nd guitar player does all the vocals as well. At first I was a bit disappointed with the lead guitar player but towards the end he really played much better. They play a real dark stoner sound. A few songs like Morocco, are very Kyuss influenced but played well. A new song called Immaterialize was really excellent. They had one song that was very much like the cool Dutch band 7ZUMA7 (R.I.P.). They played for 50 minutes.
Set list: Tarmac, Static, A Premonition, Morocco, AWOL, Green, Immaterialize, Reaper and Mirror Palace.
Spirit Caravan were next and they were way too loud. Why do bands have to play so LOUD? The sound was excellent but too much volume. They opened with a new song called Black Flower and this was the best of the new songs they played this night. The new songs were all quite dark and slow and lacked the real kind of groove that songs like Healing Tongue, which was next have. Courage was totally excellent and the band were really tight but leaving Wino a lot of room to play guitar. He has a really tortured way of playing like he really has to struggle and that is not that natural. He is a powerful vocalist. Retroman and Spirit were next. Cosmic Artifact sounded great and then a highlight was Melancholy Grey from Jug Fulla Sun. Dreamwheel was killer as well. The title track from the new CD, Elusive was next. The band played a very heavy version of Powertime. Fang and Sun-Stoned ended the set at 1 hour. The band came back out and played a cover song, the Way She FCY. I have never heard the song but it was great. Wow. Excellent show. I hope we can get them back again. Too bad no one was there to see them.
Set list: Black Flower, Healing Tongue, Courage, Retroman, Spirit, Cosmic Artifact, Melancholy Grey, Dreamwheel, Elusive, Powertime, Fang, Sun Stoned, the Way she FCY. 68 min
Reviewed by Scott Heller