By Jase Walker
By now it’s clear that I’ve been able to easily attend some really special shows this year just due to living in the Netherlands and today’s show over in Utrecht is another fine example of this. I’ve been a fan of Charlotte Wessels’ work for a long time now due to randomly catching Delain at Sonisphere Festival in the ÜK many years ago. After the somewhat egregious dissolution of the Delain lineup and subsequent new formation, Charlotte has been striking out on her own and tonight’s event is the album release show of her latest, ‘The Obsession’.
Along for the show tonight is Faunea who I’ve not come across before so it will be a special double bill of new music to my ears and I’m pretty bloody excited to get that in the more intimate Pandora stage at Tivoli Vredenburg. It always strikes me just how far up this stage is: the Tivoli is a fairly tall building and this stage is essentially at the top floor.
Faunea starts and to my surprise it’s a solo acoustic guitar and singer act. Her voice is absolutely enchanting, it’s wonderfully warm, slightly breathy and hushed. She remarks that normally she does electronic pop music but for tonight it’s more of a stripped back show which seems like an interesting choice given what Charlotte is set to follow up with. Actually thinking about it, her voice does bear a bit of a resemblance to Aurora and the mention of electronic pop music has certainly piqued my interest a bit too. The crowd is almost deadly silent too, which is rarer than you might think when it comes to watching acoustic acts at shows like this but a welcome rarity all the same. I’m quite fixated on her voice though, there’s something wonderfully about the almost effortless way she can sweep through pitches to craft beautiful melodies.
Suddenly she stops to call out for a doctor as it appears someone isn’t right down the front and she appears incredibly shocked and quickly ducks off stage with a pretty worried expression. Whatever it was has certainly rattled her and you don’t see that sort of look on someone’s face without something quite serious happening out of nowhere. Thankfully this hasn’t completely stopped her set but shows a real level of care as a performer to stop your set dead to make sure someone’s okay. Her manner of speaking to introduce her songs and describe the story behind them also reminds me strongly of Aurora, the sort of vivid experiences and retelling with an element of surreal humour. Lovely way to start the show.
And finally the big event, Charlotte Wessels playing through ‘The Obsession‘.
I suppose what strikes me first is that this feels like a continuation of the vibe of Delain but you can strongly feel that she gets to really work the music around her vocal melodies and style rather than the other way around. The band backing her sound absolutely monstrous too. It’s also times like this that I feel compelled to keep working on my Dutch as I keep going to see Dutch artists in the Netherlands and they, obviously, talk Dutch to the audience. I get the cliffnotes so far but I definitely wish I had a better handle on the meaning, anyway I digress. This production isn’t leaving anything to waste either, even streamers pop from the stage early on which I’ve never seen on anything other than fairly large shows. It definitely feels like she’s added more vocal dynamics to her performance as well as in addition to the operatic soaring melodies there’s touches of voice-breaks in a similar fashion to Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries.
Barely a bit further into the show Charlotte suddenly decides to check how many non-Dutch people are in the audience which remarkably is actually quite a few so she’s opted to switch to English. The musical style doesn’t just hang onto the symphonic metal style of her previous work with Delain, there’s some fantastically synthy hard rock starring in the swt too, which honestly reminds me a lot of Muse. Charlotte is easily one of the most incredible singers in metal right now too, and just to highlight that she made a guest appearance at Epica’s orchestral shows in Amsterdam last month too. I’m aware I’m keeping the focus strongly on Charlotte so far but man this stuff is riffy as hell. A cover of ‘Cry Little Sister’ is well received too, it’s a pretty interesting take on it too, a lot heavier too.
As if I had a moment of foresight, I pulled my phone out to grab a quick video just in time to catch someone walk on with an electric cello for a guest spot. I adore these sorts of moments when “non-traditional metal” instruments suddenly pop up (shout out to Imminence and Ne Obliviscaris), it really pushes the classic roots of metal to new heights. I don’t seem to readily recall Charlotte using many uncleans in previous work either and she does use them sparingly in her solo material as shown in this set and it catches me off guard every time with the impact it has. Holy shit, there’s even a gospel moment with a backing choir too? Incredible.
I think given the amount of shows I’ve covered this year I can say with no doubt in my mind that 2024 has been an incredible year for women and femme led metal, a significant portion of the best shows I’ve seen this year have been creatively led by solo women and this is another excellent entry into that. A bit of an odd moment is one of the entries for this set is actually a vinyl/pattern exclusive song which is interesting as I don’t see that happen super often.
It’s a nice and amusing touch that after talking about the backstory to ‘The Crying Room’, I’ve just noticed that Charlotte is wearing a t-shirt that says “I ❤️ Crying”, some brilliant self-deprecation. What seems to be the encore is a softer acoustic song to play things out but it’s not quite over yet as one last big banger or two to go.
What truly fantastic show this evening has been, Charlotte Wessels and her ensemble band have been a true treat and I don’t doubt that they’ll be welcomed on stages across Europe in support of VOLA in the coming months. She’ll be a definite show for festivals across the continent next year too, I feel it in my bones. Holy shit that was two full hours, mad.
Also final footnote but I really have to shout out to that one, clearly classically trained, lady in the audience belting out those high pitched wails after every song… what the fuck?!
