With Ave being one of my absolute favourite bands in the Danish underground, and knowing the guitarist through a friend, I had been very excited for this gig for a long time. Ave were to open the festival on the Big Stage with Odense Symphonic Orchestra and Herning Boy Choir.


Normally Ave play a theatrical form for indie-rock a la Mew and Kashmir, with a stage setup like a livingroom from the fifties, string quartets in masks and lyrics taken from books in a time far, far away. This all may sound horribly pretentious but actually works incredibly well, mainly because of a sublime live sound and great songwriting. I've seen them live a couple of times before and greatly enjoyed it, and was very excited both for the opening speach and of course the Ave gig.

So I queued and got ready to run by the guards quickly flashing them my red wristband. "No one gets in unless they have 1-day tickets or special tickets for the opening gig!" WTF? Major glitch in the planning. Apparently you had to have a special, tiny, blue ticket if you wanted to go see the opening speach. But no one had informed us, and even press and media had to go queue again, only to be told that the magic blue tickets were magically sold out. Bummer!

So with no hope of getting in to see the gig I settled on sitting outside the door to maybe hear a little bit of the music (after furiously shouting at some pigeons outside, obviously.) And magically, the door opened revealing two seats for me and my companion! On the seats were a welcome letter from the festival management along with a letter from Ave, explaning the story behind the songs and closed with a proper, old-fashioned red wax seal. Unfortunately we missed the beginning of the gig and entered in the middle of the intro for If Ever Any Beauty.

Ave's songs are already symphonic in sound but with the extra layer of the orchestra the songs really unfolde, helped by text snippets and film on the back ground projector. It was a setup more like a symphony than contemporary songs with a symphonic addition, with each song blending into the next and long outro/intros. But Ave's sense of the quirky sound was further elaborated with jazzy trumpet solos and using not (as usual) one, but four typewriters as percussionon the magnificent, moody Endless Light.

All in all I was in doubt as to whether it was alright to applaud in between songs or if I should treat them more as parts of a symphony and not clap until the entire gig finished, but behind it all is the solid songwriting and skills of one of the best underground bands in Denmark right now. And a gig that I nearly missed turned out to be as good as my expectations of it. Now we just wait for the debut.

Posted In Live Reviews, Jun 01 2009. Words - Cecilie