It may sound like a cliché, but Madrid is a really crazy city where there’s a lot of “if you blink, you’ll miss it” stuff going on all the time. Its pace is gripping and breakneck, sometimes seeming like the product of fiction that is as chaotic as it is surreal. In Madrid, the event of the year can happen on any day and lasts only until, in a matter of months, days and even hours, another one appears to replace it.

Yesterday was Tuesday, a rather boring day of the week, no matter how much the Rolling Stones wanted to dedicate a song to it. However, walking down Madrid’s Calle Arenal, it felt like it was Friday. A long line hung impatiently from the entrance to the Eslava Theater to the Opera Square. The reason is another concert of the year by two reference groups on the domestic stage: Amaral and Carolina Durante. And while the spotlight is on Seville with the Latin Grammys, things continue to happen in the capital.

Tickets suddenly went on sale on October 5 and literally sold out. 15 minutes later the phone hung up. sold out. Nobody wanted to miss the unusual mix of two bands who made a name for themselves thanks to good songs and the best live performances. Amaral is enjoying a second youth, topping the bill at festivals, recapturing his 25 years in music and reinventing himself from the consolidated fan base that has grown with his songs. Los Carolina Durante wrap up their tour a year and a half after the release of their second studio album, “Cuatro Chavales” (Sonido Muchacho, 2022), with which they conquered venues and festivals on both sides of the pond, session at KEXP included.

The occasion for this generational transition was the celebration of the 10th anniversary of Cómplices Vibra Mahou programming. An initiative aimed at mixing genres and audiences, as happened last night in the former Joy Eslava.

Hosted by music journalist Arturo Paniagua as host, the concert began as a gang war in which the newcomers struck first. The Carolinas began, as they always had since they began to spin, with that desperate cry that Aaaaa#%!& and continued to play at speed Ramoniana, as if they were racing against the clock against themselves to fit the maximum number of songs in the minimum amount of time. These four children are full of energy and wild passion. Their lyrics, evoking pogos, screams and jumping, reflect frustration, irony and anxiety; youth anthems that earned them the clichéd but equally true generational band moniker.

He Set list It had a nostalgic aftertaste thanks to the deliberate highlighting of the band’s most classic songs, such as Necromantic, Night of the Dead or Songs of Juanitaafter which singer Diego Ibáñez shed tears while the audience chanted it we don’t sound bad, we sound better than yesterdaywhich can be understood as the end of a phase in which these four guys went from just another guitar band to icons of the rock renaissance in the Spanish indie scene.

Just at that moment Amaral appeared and the six played together. Damn, I don’t know And Without you I am nothingin the emotional duet of Diego and Eva, which will remain in the memory of the audience, fully involved in what was happening on stage, before turning their attention to the masters.

Amaral is also pure energy, but less aggressive, less youthful, real professionals of stadium music, where there is something epic in the melodies, and the impulse of Eva Amaral’s voice can penetrate even to the ribs. The people of Zaragoza used their entire repertoire to move through various stages, from protests to protests. Revolution or Jumpeven the most poetic choruses The seas are just like you or In wild nature without leaving such classics as The universe is above me where Eve grabbed an acoustic and a harmonica and sang, “Like a man shipwrecked at sea, I want to find my place, just find my place.”

After 25 years in music, his place is more than clear, and it seems that his comrades are too. Two bands whose paths crossed at a crucial point in their careers in what could be one of the events of the year for music lovers in the capital, at least until we experience the next one again.