2025-02-28 - Antigel Festival, Eglise de Bernex, Bernex, CH

pic by André Roseda

On Stage :

Solo concert in a church.

Toby May opened the show.

https://antigel.ch/event/joseph-arthur/
Some pics were posted on the Berneix website here (thank you Xavier!)

Setlist :

Not complete & not in order. Please email me any infos.

Rise
Coney island baby
Even tho
I wanna know you
A smile that explodes
Can't exist
Favorite girl
Hooponopono
Grateful
Mercedes
No weapon
Travel as equals
Thank you is my mantra
Honey and the moon
In the sun
Redemption's son

Thanks to Millie & Xavier for her help !

Recording :

Sadly, there's no audio recording of this event.
If I am wrong, thank you to inform me by email.

Review :

By David Glaser for Suississimo.com

Joseph Arthur enters the church, clad in a jacket of his own design, tall and slightly awkward, his colorful guitar slung across his back. He waits patiently to be introduced by the Antigel team. The concert begins in the Catholic church of Bernex with a burst of energy, but his guitar struggles to keep up. Due to a technical problem, he is forced to improvise a tribute – that he planned – to a friend he once knew in New York, Lou Reed. The unamplified magic is there—Joseph is a musician. The acoustics of the church work in his favor. The wires are reconnected, and the amplified version of the show resumes, but there’s a sense that the emphasis on the words and chords is a bit too heavy-handed.

The volume is high, and the loop effects through the sampling pedals feel excessive. Joseph had turned these tools into an orchestra during the « Big City Secrets » era in 1996. He wasn’t alone in this, but he gained recognition by traveling light across the globe, with only his guitar and his minimalist array of pedals. Time has passed, but Joseph hasn’t changed. What remains is the feeling of being in the presence of a man who lives his art with intensity—perhaps a bit too much.

Why? Too many effects in a microphone that amplifies his voice excessively, that’s why. Too much sound in the amps, too much in the general amplification, too much in the return amps. We are in a church, and while some of Joseph Arthur’s songs are delicate, the overwhelming amplification of the concert proves really unfortunate.

The hits roll by: In The Sun, Chemical, A Smile That Explodes, and Mercedes, enriched by the tones of an harmonica for the last one. But still, the magic is absent, as though the artist isn’t truly present in his performance, as though he cannot feel the subtle shifts of the music. But Joseph is a musician, and a troubadour. And he will know how to resurrect from desperate situations… He knows how to enchant the congregation with mantras of forgiveness and gratitude.

We will then continue the show with him and learn to love the repeated refrain, “Thank you, I’m sorry, so sorry”—a small, welcomed transition in a beautiful, starry evening. My neighbor in the second row is one of the more engaged members of the parish. He isn’t having an exceptional time, and I find myself stepping into his shoes without wanting in. He hears me singing slightly off-key during the Mercedes refrain and smiles, perhaps inwardly. I am not too sure. My wonderful girlfriend on my right is enjoying the moment despite the long trip she just did to come meet me at the show.

There are a few fans scattered in the crowd. I must admit, I love Joseph Arthur, and I’ve seen him many times throughout my life, in venues where 3,000 people mostly came to see Ben Harper. He was a great act for a support. I saw him in England, I saw him in France, I lived in New York, was once seated in an Economy class section of an American Airlines flight… Joseph Arthur was a major player in my life.

Several times, I have let myself be swept away by Joseph’s music, his gift for telling the story of a troubled American childhood in a battered Ohio, of telling simple, poetic and highly spiritual life situations also appealed to me. Several times, I’ve succumbed to his raw, easily recognizable lyricism, his bare-bones lyrics or images constructed on a shoestring (“I donated myself to the Mexican Army,” “Daddy’s on Prozac”), his fondness for a polished production—everything from the Big City Secrets album to pop songs like Chemical, and its resemblance to a Beck reborn, more generally to Come to Where I Come From, the follow up of Big City Secrets. The album contained the keys to launching the artist into the stratosphere. It was in my dreams though. Joseph did not follow through.

The problem is, a church is almost too beautiful for this folk music enriched with looping effects, other problem is Joseph was never a star ready to play the game. He was always the anti-hero, the multi-talented guy that we admire from the distance but that the big business of music does not really one, too indie in his mind, too weird… There’s an overwhelming surproduction of sound in this concert in the church of Bernex, a temptation for rock and roll and its Gods, a lack of self-consciousness, I wish Arthur would have come with a « metteur en scène » or some all-around manager. He got it by the COVID19 debacle, the antivax movement and its strange interpretations, since then, Joseph Arthur keeps his cool but does not come back with a major new and fresh breeze of music. Not a problem, sometimes, it is just as nice to see old classic idols and hope for something different the following time. See you next time Jo.

David Glaser (text and photos)

Poster :

by David Glaser

by David Glaser