Not So Famous…

So last night, we went to the Boardwalk in Orangevale to see Nightwish, and it was well worth the $30+ price of admission, in my opinion.

First off, Tuomas Holopainen writes some stellar music, and he does it well.  I’ll explain the why’s and wherefore’s later, but let me say that he writes far more than metal tunes.  He composes symphonically metal epics.

The band has some great stage chemistry.  I can’t speak to this because I never saw Nightwish with Tarja, their previous singer, but I’ve heard they’re a lot happier with Anette Olzon. They certainly seemed so onstage.  After one of the tunes, Anette actually hugged Marco, the other lead singer and bassist…just happy to be onstage and singing with him.  When Anette came back from a little instrumental break, she brought a cloth and mopped Tuomas’ face for him.  She seems to love the band, and you can tell by their grins when she’s singing and talking, they love her.  They’re out to rock, but you can tell that they love doing it.

Tuomas enjoyed the attention his music got, and did a great job, but for me the star of the evening was Emppu.

Emppu is the guitarist for Nightwish, and he has a sort of dialogue with the crowd that is truly a joy to behold.  He laughs with them, makes faces at them, throws his picks at them…he really enjoys being a part of Nightwish. At one point, he made his way across the stage to Tuomas to get a drink of something, which Tuomas poured into his mouth.  The crowd loved it.  The crowd loved it all.

I don’t know if the guys are happier with Anette than with Tarja, but they couldn’t be any less happy.  They had a blast.

As for Anette’s voice, as always, it sounded better on the album.  But she did a good job, hitting notes that I think are in her upper range.  I’m a much bigger fan of Anette than Tarja, but after hearing Anette sing some of Tarja’s songs, I can say a couple things for certain, and I’ll leave you with these:

1. Tarja’s voice is powerful, and has an undeniable attraction.  Her accent is part of it, but Anette on the old Tarja songs just doesn’t sound the same.  It’s good, sure.  But those older songs just aren’t as good as when Tarja sang them.  However….I love Anette’s voice!  A LOT more than Tarja’s.  So how do I explain this?

2. I think Tarja sounding better on the old songs are due to Tuomas’ writing. Tuomas is a skilled composer.  He knows who will be singing his songs, and he writes them accordingly.  I don’t think Tarja would sound half as good as Anette does on Amaranth, for example.  That is Anette’s song.  Tuomas wrote it with her in mind, I believe.  I think this is the true skill of Tuomas.  He doesn’t just write generic Nightwish songs.  He composes songs for a very specific orchestration.  I think we can continue to expect great things from this Finnish power quintet, indeed.

It was seriously a great show.