As the concert approaches its brilliant climax in front of the encore block, WandaFrontman Michael Marco Fitzthum immersed in absinthe-green stage lights like a shaman and vehemently demands hard liquor. “I want Schnaaaaaps,” he hisses, gurgles and grins into the bulging round of the lake stage in the Olympic Park, while his band, which until then has been playing rather confidently, unfolds a blues rock madness that couldn’t be dirtier and more rousing.
And yes, of course it’s a fine joke that a band appears in the accompanying festival of a sporting event like the “European Championships” that has committed itself to the old dogma of excess rock’n’roll more emphatically than almost any other band. But good, as one said in an interview with Berliner daily mirror finds out, Fitzthum has long since matured into a “professional alcoholic” who meticulously ensures that he has enough water when drinking and has also said goodbye to schnapps, which he does not even advise to digest.
More than just snappy to mangy drinking and sing-along anthems
That seems to suit him quite well, at least on stage. With the opening “Bussi Baby” he switches into a hyperactivity mode that includes all forms of audience animation. It is more than sporty how Fitzthum fights for precious metals in his very own disciplines in his now well-grown leather jacket. From the traditional spinning of the dervish to constant hopping to the exact beat to more choreographically animating challenges such as the sustained two-armed pendulum wave or the finger heart presented on your knees.
Nicely enough, Wanda prove at the same time that there is much more to them than just dashing to mangy drinking and singing-along anthems. Because even if the beginning turns out to be rather muddy in terms of sound, it also crystallizes here that they have long since achieved true mastery in the consistent singing of extremely rough emotional states. There’s still that eternal lust for the pain of love and its numbness (“breaking up is hard”). There is still this longing for the land beyond the Brenner Pass (“Lascia mi fare”), sometimes expressed in Viennese Italian.
At the same time, however, Wanda also show new sides on this evening with new singles from their album, which will be released in September, such as “Rocking in Wien” and “Va bene”. While the former testifies to a new, humorous mood of quotation as a wonderfully stupid Falco satire, the old age melancholy of “Va bene” contains a hitherto unknown thoughtfulness. As the years go by, one becomes a little more “anxious”, “uglier”, “lonelier” and “vulnerable”, as Fitzthum roared with this wonderfully ornate vocal Viennese speech melody on the lake stage, only to then state that yes anyway everything must go on. moody? canvas!