Live: Go_A almost demolished Opium Live in Dublin
Concert articles are back yay! Come with me to see how the concert of the Ukrainian band Go_A, which you may remember from Eurovision 2021 with the hit Shum, went on.
Who are Go_A?
The four-piece band hails from different corners of Ukraine and categorizes themselves as a Ukrainian electro folk band, and that’s exactly what you can expect from their music. If you follow Eurovision, then you heard Go_A for the first time in 2020 with the song Solovey, with which they were supposed to represent Ukraine at Eurovision. However, the ESC was not held that year due to covid. The following year, the group came out with the song Shum and finished 5th in the Eurovision final.
So I’ve known them for over three years. I really enjoy their music, the combination of Ukrainian, folklore and electro is simply divine.
When they announced a stop in Dublin as part of the Ukrainian magic tour, I knew I had to go. At that time they already had another song out, Rusalochki, which I also really like and I just didn’t want to miss it. The concert was originally supposed to be on October 20, but the band was “stranded” in Iceland, due to bad weather their flights to Ireland were canceled and they couldn’t come. The concert was postponed to Sunday, December 3. Which was great news because no one wanted to go out in this weather and another friend joined us.
In the meantime, we had a Loreen concert (yes, I’m on the ESC wave this year), which was of course also great. However, my passion for photographing live music returned and I bought a new, smaller camera. I then took it with me to the Go_A concert and you can see the resulting photos in this article.
Go_A played at Dublin club Opium Live. This is on the other side of Whelans, where I was at Alice Merton in 2019 (article) and a year ago at Wallis Bird. We were all there for the first time, the club is about the size of the main hall at The Academy and even has a balcony. But we were almost at the back under the balcony because we came later. In front of us were two columns that held the mentioned balcony and also about two rows of two-meter tall men. And also the wires for the sound, so my friends and I had to move quite a bit to see anything at all.
What was the concert like?
The band didn’t have an opening act, which was really nice, because somehow I was just in the mood for Go_A. The concert started at half past nine and ended sometimes a little after ten. The encore was Shum’s original version. The concert started with the ESC version.
The setlist consisted of older as well as new songs, Go_A also played a cover of Zombie by The Cranberries (but they play it normally, it wasn’t because of Ireland). The concert was energetic, the audience encouraged the band by clapping, cheering and stomping (the latter could not only be heard a lot, but also felt lol). Frontwoman Monokate took advantage of this connection and before we knew it, we were laughing at her jokes and jumping like we were young again to Nebo v dolonyakh and dancing to the final version of Shum (in a circle, holding hands with random people from the audience). Both almost killed me haha but it was worth it.
So I came to the concert prepared, I had listened to all the available songs from the setlist on Spotify, so except for about two I knew all of them and enjoyed the concert a lot. However, the energy and great atmosphere is just something you can only hope for before the concert starts. I’m so glad I had the chance to see Go_A live. They are one of those bands that sound a hundred times better live than in the studio and I just think how great it must had been at Eurovision.
Due to recent events I must include this disclaimer: Please do not re-post any of my photos, do not attempt to get rid of the logo (it’s ugly for a reason). If you are interested in any of my photos feel free to reach out to me on Facebook or Insta. I’m usually a reasonable person. Any unauthorized use of my photos will be prosecuted.
