Danish Tim C - with international eyes

REVIEW BY: John Hassall, former bass player in the English rock band The Libertines and now frontman of the band Yeti, and American Mark Schapiro, who is a journalistat the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIRO) in California, and musicjournalist for the magazine Elle, and San Francisco Magazine. 

were among the audience for Tim Christensen concert. Listen to their review of the Danish rock star

• Not being Danish, we had no history of associations with Tim Christensen and his band The Damn Crystals.
• Immediately overwhelmed by the crunchy, dominating bass and the heavily loaded drums we were unsure: Was Christensen channeling Deep Purple? Secret-agent music? Classic 70’s rock?
  
  By the second song, we thought: There’s something happening here in this mixture of styles and influences, the deftly handled shifts in pace, the melting pot of motley influences. And by the third number, as the audience jumped to their feet and retouched their memories to one of Christensen’s recent classics, Jump the Gun, the contrast between the heavy bass and Christensen’s own melodious voice started to actually seem intentional. We started to board the rock train.
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• Christensen is a natural, laying out his songs like he means it. And his band have obviously been around the block, playing off each other like gears in a soft machine. And you have to give him and the Crystals credit for not being afraid to take on “the big rock guitar solo”. Done badly, such a jump off the board can be catastrophic.
  
  But they stared down the specter of seventies rock caricature and thundered away with high-level musical exchanges between Christensen, on rhythm, and Lars Skjaerbaek, on lead, pulling off intricate rhythmic changes and expert accelerations into the higher frets and shifts in pacing that kept up the tension. The bass player, Søren Koch, pivoted in and out of their exchanges with searing effect.
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• The band debuted several new numbers from it’s latest record, one of which featured a stomping blues straight from the swamps of Copenhagen—if it had any. But the riffs were honest, as were the vocals, marked by Christiansen’s clear desire to reveal something of himself amidst the guitar driven attack.
  
  “I am a perfectionist,” he confessed in his song ‘Superior’ “Terrified of what I might find if I lose control of my very soul.”
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• Of course, letting go of control is something we might all learn from; and if anything, the extraordinarily tight band might consider losing a little bit of it next time and see what they find. But for forty action packed minutes, Christensen and The Damn Crystals filled the room with raucous expertise and commitment. 
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• source: aoa.dk