What is your favorite Froukje phrase? Mine: ‘I’m in the meter cupboard. I wanted to know if it fits and it fits’. A small, funny image. There is a kind of tragedy in it, but not too much. Froukje is good at that: sketching everyday worries and doubts. Not necessarily severe depression, but just things that cross our minds from time to time. Why doesn’t he call back? Who is that ugly one in the mirror?
Froukje still hasn’t released a debut album, but she effortlessly plays an hour full of catchy synthpop songs, the collected work of her two EPs. In her hard-rocking intro, she winks ahead to the hit she will keep until the end, before kicking in with her breakthrough single ‘Greater Than Ik’, a song about climate anxiety and other Journaal concerns. The time of inconsiderate youth, it will not come back, she sings a little later, to make us dance happily laughing to it. They are thoughts that fit the tilt from childhood to adulthood, but the 35-year-olds here in the tent have not forgotten that moment.
After a flaming start, Froukje makes her songs smaller and smaller, until she is playing the love song ‘A Sign’ all by herself, followed by ‘Light and Dark’. She also looks so subtle in the big tent. Perhaps precisely because her band had sometimes been a bit bombastic, especially guitar and drums. That is especially true in the clunky new rock tune ‘Is Dit Echt’, which is really a bit too much of a good thing. She is simply at her best when she goes all-out on the electronic tour, à la Moderat.
Fortunately, Froukje still has four top songs in store for the end of her set. Four songs in which her characteristic light-heartedness prevails. In which her original sense of melody is given plenty of space. In which she sings flawlessly and raps playfully. In which she shows herself again with a dreamy look on the big screens. Best Kept Secret has a collective crush.
Watch all concert recordings via YouTube
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