Every so often a band comes along inside a whirlwind of hype and excitement that makes you feel you need to see them live before they they move from the tiny intimate rooms where they’ve forged their reputations to the larger venues their growing fanbase requires. Sadly for me, by the time I get onboard with Wunderhorse they’d already progressed to selling out the likes of the four thousand capacity Victoria Warehouse in Manchester. But in these situations there’s often a secret way to jump about six months into the past, which is often to head to Europe where their fame and demand for tickets hadn’t hadn’t quite grown to the same point.
As luck would have it the gig scheduling gods had decided to line their visit to Berlin alongside a string of concerts I wanted to get to, which seemed like a good excuse for a trip out to my favourite European city. Whilst I’ll save my general observations around German shows compared to British ones for another article, like all the venues I visited Huxley’s Neue Welt was tied in to the history of the city; whilst the original Neue Welt was knocked down and replaced in the eighties it ranked as one of few venues to have had both Jimi Hendrix and Adolf Hitler take to its stage, although I suspect both had quite different crowds attending.
Openers for the evening were hotly tipped Birmingham quartet overpass, putting in a sterling half hour of indie rock that showed why their upcoming autumn tour is already nearing sold out. That said, it felt like a bit of extra snarl in their performance could take them to another level of intrigue and thrill needed to take them up to the next rung on the musical success ladder.
When Wunderhorse appeared it was straight into the mesmeric four chord riff of Midas – it’s always a brave choice for an artist to open with their most well known song but in this case immediately built up the atmosphere. Matching the song’s manic energy frontman Jacob Slater scrawled around the stage seemingly in a battle to the death with his guitar, making for compulsive viewing with the fear that one false move and the whole song would fall to pieces, yet somehow the band managed to avoid falling off the tightrope that was of their own making.
The rawness of the performance was brought into focus by the minimalistic set up the show; the stage backdrop simply of the band’s logo, highlighted in a different colour for each song only serving to enforce the punk ethos of the band. The minimal acknowledgement of the audience and extended intros gave the impression of seeing the band jamming away to themselves rather than putting on a show, yet somehow this only seemed to bring performer and crowd tighter together achieving a last gang in town mentality that many artists aim for but few successfully pull off.
Midway through the set though things were taken to another level, with Leader of the Pack‘s jangly southern rock introduction heralding a run through of firm fan favourites Arizona, Purple, The Rope and Teal, each performed with the lyrics sung back in unison by the audience. And as a feedback drenched finale of Rain came to its end, Jacob slammed down his guitar and stormed off stage without a single farewell and thanks, leading to many of the audience perplexed as to whether the show was over or not.
In all my many years of live music I haven’t seen many bands pull off a performance of such intensity and rawness as Wunderhorse achieved. With two albums under the belt and quickly gaining cult status the question for the band is how do they keep the frantic energy that has made them the act they are in the face of their growing critical and commercial success, a challenge that has downed many a band over the course of the years.
Wunderhorse performed:
Midas
Butterflies
Emily
Girl
Girl Behind the Glass
Cathedrals
Leader of the Pack
Arizona
Purple
The Rope
Teal
Silver
Superman
Rain
Alex Reviews Gigs 
Leave a comment