26-01-2010 Expatriate

Venue: MTC, Cologne (Germany)
By: Nina Mende

Tonight we went to the MTC in Cologne, a little club in the basement of the city.

We arrived just in time to see the opening artist perform. Two guys, both playing guitar, one of them was singing. The songs were in German and English, very melodic and deep. You had the feeling of being at an “open mic” night with singer / songwriters on stage. Amazingly pure he touched everybody in the venue with his music. The singer also talked quite a bit with the audience, told some stories of his life. It grew very familiar until he had to leave. Wonderful performance, unfortunately we missed the two guys introducing themselves.

Up next was Expatriate. Expatriate is an indie rock band based in Australia and currently living in Berlin. The band formed in Sydney, Australia, in 2005 and currently consists of vocalist Ben King, drummer Chris Kollias, keyboardist Damian Press and bassist David Molland. All the sudden I realized all the young girls in the front row. It felt like a student exchange class and maybe it even was. After seeing them with Placebo I was now quite curious how they would sound in a small venue with them headlining. The audience loved Expatriate. They cheered and screamed so loud, singing and dancing along to the music, that even Expatriate was overwhelmed. Ben couldn’t stop thanking their fans and mentioning how great it was to receive such feedback. Expatriate played old and very new songs, as well as many songs off the current record. As Expatriate performed the released singles the audience sang along so loudly Ben didn’t even have to sing. So he just stood there enjoying it. The music was thriving, so literally everybody was dancing along. You had no choice. The band played it very passionate and energetic. The keyboarder and guitar player Damian was barefoot. The girls in the front row went wild, sang along ecstatically and tried hard to get the attention of the band members. The guys along simply enjoyed the music, jumped around and sang along. Expatriate sounds like a mix of Depeche Mode and The Cure along with a little bit of The Killers and A-Ha. Expatriate put up a very impressive performance, one we will remember for sure.