Ericka Jane arrived at De Første Stråler in a white cap, angel wings, balloons and a T-shirt that declared her “AS APATHETIC AS CAN BE.” Luckily, she was anything but. She worked for every glance and every lifted head, but between the stage’s big gestures and the audience’s cautious nods, a distance opened up that the pop never quite managed to close. Everything was set for the party. The only thing missing was the moment it actually began.
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
There are pop concerts that begin with a song, and pop concerts that begin with a mood board. Ericka Jane brought both to De Første Stråler on Thursday night, but it was the mood board that stuck first.
The white cap sat low over her eyes. The T-shirt shouted “AS APATHETIC AS CAN BE” in large black letters. Chains, jewellery and long fringes hung from her shorts, turning even an ordinary movement into a little stage show, and behind her an illuminated angel wing unfolded in purple, yellow and red light. Later, a large cluster of balloons emerged from the smoke.
It looked like a party where the decorations, photographer and dress code were all in place, while half the guests were still marked as “maybe” in the Facebook event.
The visual language, however, was easy enough to read. Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani and Nelly Furtado are declared sources of inspiration, and Ericka Jane borrows from an era when a pop singer was expected to bring more than songs. There had to be colour, attitude, accessories, a touch of danger and, ideally, clothes your parents would have called impractical.
Ericka Jane understands that grammar. She wears it without the usual Danish safety net of ironic quotation marks. The cap, the angel wing and the hyper-feminine Y2K aesthetic are not an excuse for the music. They are part of the project. She smiles, sings with her whole body and moves towards the audience as if the smaller stage could be expanded by sheer force of will.
That is the concert’s clearest strength. She means it.
The problem is that it is not enough for the host to mean the party if the guests are still standing there with their coats on.
The audience keeps time and nods along. A few heads follow the beat, but the movement never spreads through the crowd, and the big choruses never trigger the collective response they are clearly built for. The raised arms stay mostly onstage. The distance between performer and audience never turns hostile or awkward; it just keeps existing.
And that is almost worse. A bad concert can at least create irritation. Here, what emerges is mostly a polite holding pattern.
The setting deserves some of the blame. Ericka Jane played De Første Stråler at 8.30 p.m., an hour before Medina was due to gather the whole festival in front of the main stage. The audience was scattered between food, wine, friends and the next concert, and a smaller festival stage always has to compete with the urgent questions: Where are the others, and who can be bothered to fetch something to drink?
But a strong festival show should be able to make those questions less important. It should create its own pressure in the room. Here, the songs point towards euphoria without bringing it into being.
The interesting thing is that much the same combination of angel wings, balloons and demonstrative Y2K pop was highlighted earlier this year after Ericka Jane’s concert at SPOT Festival, where an initially sparse audience ended up dancing. So the show can open up. It just did not do so this Thursday in Valbyparken.
At Syd for Solen, then, the props ended up working harder than props should. When the balloons hang together in the stage haze, the image is both beautiful and revealing. They tell us that the party is here now. The body simply never got the message.
There is something sympathetic about Ericka Jane refusing to turn it down. For decades, Danish pop has carried a strange suspicion that visible ambition is more embarrassing than caution, especially when that ambition comes with glitter and a very clear idea of femininity. Ericka Jane does not make herself smaller to fit in. She wants the big chorus, the big image and the big release. That deserves respect.
But pop is a collective agreement to risk looking a little ridiculous at the same time. The artist signs first, and then the audience has to do the same. At De Første Stråler, Ericka Jane was left alone with the pen.
This was not a lazy concert. Nor was it an insignificant one. It had a clear identity, a physically engaged performer and several images that will look excellent on a phone screen. But the set did not change the space around it, and so it remained a presentation of a party rather than the party itself.
The pictures tell us that something big happened. The body remembers mostly that it stood there waiting.
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