“Four best friends playing The Paradiso” bassist Andy Keating tells the thousand and a half crowd in front of him half way through the set in the Grote Zaal (Big Room) of the legendary Amsterdam venue. That Ist Ist don’t at any point look or sound out of place on one of the world’s best known stages is testament to how far they’ve come as they approach their tenth anniversary.
Marathon open proceedings with an impressive half hour set by the emerging Dutch band. The five-piece might only have an EP and a couple of singles to their name but they deliver a performance worthy of headlining in here. Not even the drumkit taking up space centre stage restricting their movements can dilute their powerful mix of post-punk and shoegaze. They move effortlessly from one style to the next but they’re at their best when they create their own hybrid of the two. The crowd rightly love them. It won’t be long before it’s their name over the door here.
Adam tells us during the set that playing this venue was something he dreamt of as a child. The Paradiso has that spell, that name. Bands come here and play the compact upstairs room but there’s few indepedently releasing bands coming here from the UK and filling the main space set against the stained glass windows and the tall straight balconies that give it the atmosphere it’s famed worldwide for.
Three-quarters of the way through their UK and European tour in support of their Top 25 album Light A Bigger Fire, Ist Ist are on a roll, supremely confident after a series of shows in Eastern Europe for the very first time and stepping out on this huge stage fresh from a signing session in Amsterdam’s biggest record store Concerto in the afternoon. They’re a big deal here so the pressure’s on to deliver.
And deliver they do with a stunning set of twenty-three songs taken from across their four albums including Light A Bigger Fire in full. That people were talking on their way out of favourites not making the set is testament to the strength of the body of work they’ve built whilst being widely ignored for whatever reason by press and radio and the people who try and direct musical taste back home. Here, with the support of Kink FM, the Netherlands’ biggest indie station, they’re regulars alongside heavyweights like Blur and Oasis and big breaking artists while the media championed bands back home are in the small rooms or support slots.
It doesn’t take long to work out why. Starting with Lost My Shadow and The Kiss, Light A Bigger Fire’s opening dual salvo, is a statement of intent. The sound fills every corner of the room, Ist Ist have a rare knack of sounding like an arena filling band or an intimate small venue one dependent on where they’re playing. Here with impeccable sound that allows you to hear all the detail of Joel’s drums, Andy’s driving, rumbling and direction leading bass and Mat’s keys and often wild guitar, they’ve created a sound that draws people in by the frills of their influences but which at the core is a representation of the four of them. Dead centre sit Adam’s vocals, the emotion buried in the deep baritone and revealed at the key moments in the songs. He’s developed into a more mobile and engaging front man too, a sign of the band’s growing unshakeable confidence in who and what they are. They’re finding their audience their way and the roar as they leave for a well-earned pause before the encore tells its own story of how the very best music always does.
The way Ist Ist have developed from a noisy post punk three piece to this assured confident four piece ready for the biggest stages is reflected in the songs. Night’s Arm, the first song that they wrote together and the one that opened their first ever gig, has a punch and power that makes it almost unrecognisable whilst debut album favourites Black, Discipline and You’re Mine all feel emboldened by the band’s success. Their most experimental album, the COVID era The Art Of Lying, is the least represented here but It Stops Where It Starts and The Waves don’t let the team down, the former fizzing with a vicious intensity, the latter fusing an album’s worth of songs into five minutes.
Most striking though is the way the album three Protagonists songs have grown in the last eighteen months since its release. Nothing More Nothing Less ends in a tsunami of guitars with Mat at the helm whilst Stamp You Out, Trapdoors and Something Has To Give have an unstoppable momentum propelling them forwards.
The older songs need this development to keep up. While many bands lean heavily on their early material as a sop to fans who just want to hear the songs that made them fall in love with the band, Ist Ist play Light A Bigger Fire in full. Their most accessible record to date by a distance the songs draw in everyone from the hardcore - “from the boat to the church” is a phrase coined by those who witnessed their first Dutch show on a 100 capacity boat in Rotterdam that sold out in seconds just two years ago - to the more curious as their star rises. Without a weak track, it has moments of introspection (XXX), soaring synths (Repercussions, Hope You Love Again), big anthems (I Can’t Wait For You, Dreams Aren’t Enough, What I Know) as well as the more radio friendly singles (Lost My Shadow, The Kiss, Something Else). They finish with the widescreen majesty of Ghost before taking in the roaring acclaim of the Amsterdam crowd.
Tight as hell but with space to let loose Ist Ist look and sound like a band on a mission. Emboldened by recent successes in the face of limited support at home they’re bigger on the continent now than in the UK, with the exception of Manchester, and that ascent feels like it’s gaining momentum exponentially. Whilst they might be one of Manchester’s best kept secrets at home, the cat is out of the bag in mainland Europe.
Ist Ist played Lost My Shadow, The Kiss, Stamp You Out, I Can’t Wait For You, Black, Mary In The Black And White Room, Dreams Aren’t Enough, Fool’s Paradise, Night’s Arm, XXX, Discipline, It Stops Where It Starts, Something Else, Repercussions, The Waves, Nothing More Nothing Less, Something Has To Give, What I Know, Trapdoors, Emily, Hope To Love Again, You’re Mine and Ghost
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