Features
Rock Over Europe
The acts touring Europe in the next few months include Dido, Paul Weller, World Party, Powderfinger, Ozomatli, and Handsome Family.
One of the most-awaited tours will no doubt be Dido’s. In recent months, the British chanteuse has seen her debut album, No Angel, go double-platinum in sales. In addition to receiving rave reviews for her work, Dido received a major boost last year when American rap sensation Eminem sampled her single “Thank You” for his smash single, “Stan.”
Her monthlong tour launches April 6 in Glasgow and lingers a week in the United Kingdom. Then she’ll kick off the nine-country continental leg of the journey April 17 in Munich, Germany.
Paul Weller is also mounting an extensive European outing, including a three-night stand in Dublin and two nights in Belfast. The rest of his 26 shows will be split between four countries: Austria, Italy, Germany and Spain.
The ex-Jam and Style Council frontman is backing his 2000 release, Heliocentric, which he has declared will be his final studio release.
He’ll roll out his tour March 10 in Dornbirn, Austria. Other stops on his itinerary include Milan, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Barcelona and Madrid.
Ex-Waterboy Karl Wallinger last year resurrected World Party – the one-man band he formed in 1985 – for an album called Dumbing Up and a supporting tour. World Party continues to perform live, scheduling four English gigs in May.
Powderfinger is an Australian band that has garnered a major buzz worldwide in recent months. The Brisbane-based quintet has been knocking around their home base of Northern Australia since 1990, but their September release of Odyssey #5 instantly became the top-seller in the country and earned the band its first international release.
Forgoing Neil Young covers (hence the band’s name, taken from one of Young’s songs), for radio-friendly rock, Powerderfinger will spend about three weeks halfway around the world from home.
The tour will kick off March 31 in Dublin and make stops in major European cities such as London, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Zurich and Vienna.
Ozomatli is one of two American bands making the transoceanic trip to play this spring.
The Los Angeles-based band brings its melting-pot style of salsa, hip-hop, jazz-funk and harder-edged rock to the U.K. for three dates beginning April 5 in London.
Though the multicultural collective formed in 1995, Ozomatli just released its eponymous debut album last June. The outfit gained exposure to a wide audience when Carlos Santana invited the band to open several dates of his Supernatural tour last summer.
The Handsome Family is a husband and wife duo that play a form of country that blends traditional and alt-country genres, but can’t comfortably be defined as either. Vocalist and composer Brett Sparks convinced his fiction-writing wife, Rennie Sparks, to write songs for him and the musical duo was born in 1995.
With a fondness for murder songs and slight punk shadings, they were not particularly well-known outside of Chicago – until the song “Arlene” from their debut recording Odessa was banned by some radio stations. The offending song was about a woman who is bludgeoned to death.
In the years since the hoopla over “Arlene” the Handsome Family has toured with Vic Chesnutt, Wilco, and the Mekons. The trek through the U.K., Ireland and France will be the duo’s second in Europe in the last year.