The “Zürich Openair” experienced a concert day with illustrious musicians on Saturday. Nemo concentrated on his music, Loyle Carner warmed hearts, and Macklemore was chosen by the audience.
Despite the sweltering heat, Nemo is bursting with energy and talent during his performance at the “Zürich Openair”.
Ueli Frischknecht
You can hear political slogans. “Free Palestine!” and “Stop the genocide!” are heard at some point from the gigantic stage of the “Zürich Openair”. But the star that everyone is watching in this country avoids making explicit statements. During his afternoon performance, Nemo Mettler concentrates on something that is often forgotten in discussions about him: the music.
Accompanied by a five-person band, he interprets his almost hour-long set as a review of his work to date. As a 25-year-old, you not only need the songs, but also the chutzpah to put a concert under the motto of early work. The performance is like a power run. Despite the sweltering heat, the singer and rapper and his followers, dressed like rebels from the Star Wars universe, are bursting with energy and talent. There is so much desire to communicate and expressiveness that it is sometimes almost too much: too many shrill tones, too much falsetto, almost too much dynamics.
Big dreams
Nemo has packed all his means of expression into a single song and achieved a huge success: “The Code” is, as expected, the conclusion of the wild round. Once again, the hit makes it clear: Here is someone who dreams big, composes big, and stages big. What Nemo does has international stature. Is that why it sometimes seems irritating in this country? Speaking of politics: Nemo does justice to his concern, his non-binary self-image, in his performance without addressing it: through changing gestures, poses and costumes.
Anyone who stays at the Zurich Open Air on a sunny Saturday can enjoy the musical variety and frequent eclecticism. The most impressive, most charming concert is that of the South London rapper Loyle Carner. His music actually offers nothing new. It is based on the rap of the 90s and is saturated with funk and soul. At the core, his touching pieces revolve again and again around a sophisticated form of melancholic musing.
Loyle Carner always wears his heart on his sleeve. With his four-person band, he knows how to condense the music and convince as a rapper. When he talks about his relationship with his three-and-a-half-year-old son, he almost seems wise: “He’s always angry with me, fights with me, gets annoyed, finds me unbearable – but twenty minutes later he comes around and explains himself, and all the quarrels are forgotten. I wish my friends could deal with feelings so well.”
When Loyle Carner raps, he wears his heart on his sleeve.
Dominic Forstenhauser
Loyle Carner’s performance fits well into the summer evening. He transforms the audience, which is now gradually making its way to Macklemore, the evening’s headliner, into an intimate and close-knit community. But to dominate a festival evening, there is too little going on on stage and the show offers too little visually.
With Macklemore, however, everything is designed to intoxicate entire halls and stadiums. The stage personnel are constantly on the move, the concert is a constant, sweaty animation show. The American rapper has a few musicians with him, but their playing is not really discernible in the mix. They are more of a part of the surging show, they dance and whirl along – just like the audience.
The 41-year-old star is a master at communicating with fans. He praises the Swiss mountains, organizes a dance competition on stage and at one point hands out fruit juice. For the finale, the man with the moustache even wears a jersey from the Swiss national football team. Macklemore repeatedly tries to get the audience excited, to make them the best audience on his tour. And thousands of people in front of the stage are inspired to enthusiasm by such speeches.
Macklemore always seeks contact with his audience: with music, light shows and political slogans.
Maurice Keiser
The best audience
A real rap variety show is taking place here, if you will. After a hard street rap piece in which he pays tribute to his hip-hop heroes from the past, he suddenly becomes deadly serious. Macklemore interrupts his fun program to express his solidarity with the people in the Gaza Strip. But that’s not all: Biden has blood on his hands, he explains, and Kamala Harris is not an option for him. Then the program continues with a song about air cushion shoes and basketball.
It is not entirely clear whether the audience appreciates the messages. In any case, they are more than satisfied with Macklemore’s show. “There is nothing I love more than European festivals on hot summer days like this,” the rapper declares. And the audience provides a final round of applause that resounds far, far beyond the outskirts of Zurich. If there really was a prize for the best live audience, they would have deserved it.
