On Thursday, February 24, Mumbai electropop duo Shaa’ir+Func played the Blue Frog. We were there.
A gig that opens with the sharp smell of acrylic aerosol paint holds the definite promise of being interesting. On Thursday, February 24, electropop duo Shaa’ir + Func played the Blue Frog, Mumbai. Comfortable on home turf and surrounded by a cloud of familiar fans, the band took the stage at 10.30 pm. The Lower Parel venue was soon filled with about 200 people, a smaller crowd absorbing the lovebeat front and center of the stage, bobbing with Tuborgs under occasional strobes.
The four-piece armed with funnyman+Khiladiman P-Man on bass and their new(ish) drummer Pravvyprav Prav – who incidentally looks remarkably like an Emraan Hashmi-Abhay Deol lovechild, played a one-and-a-half-hour greatest hits set, with an equal tilt toward material from all three albums. Before they began, each band member took a can of spray paint and graffitied the white stage backdrop, until it was sufficiently personalized. Vocalist Monica Dogra opened with “a song for all the crazies”, a cover of Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’, followed by ‘Hard To Forget’ off the band’s sophomore album, amid fluid yogic interpretive-dancing. Introducing ‘Shine’, she told the audience “We are all made of stardust in the sky, and I’ve put it all around my eyes,” referring to her trademark makeup.
As always with S+F, it didn’t take long for the entropy to build onstage, and midway through the gig the band members were throwing hand-gesture-guns and kisses at eachother. You had to take a step away from the stage and watch from the wings to see clearly how intense things were getting at different points on stage. Under spotlights, a fervently spinning vocalist, surrounded by the rest of the band headbanging, hair wild-flying amid pop-rock glory and powerful samples and guitar solos bursting off the stage from one of Randolph Correia’s range of different-colored Gibson SGs.
Toward the close of ‘My Roots’ at the end of the set, Dogra was snatching at the air timed with every downstroke of Correia’s guitar. They left the stage, and returned for an encore after Pman’s encouraging suggestion to the audience that they make more noise for Shaa’ir+Func than for the World Cup. Post-encore, the band revisited the first song off their first album, ‘It’s Probably That’, and closed with set staple ‘Embrace’. Unlike their last time at Blue Frog, the band played a collaboration-free set and the gig rested on just their energy alone. And they proved as they have time and again, that you don’t really need much more than that.
Indiecision: B+
Setlist
‘Crazy’ (Gnarls Barkley cover)
‘Hard To Forget’
‘Together Again’
‘Everytime You’re Around’
‘Shine’
‘Lord Inside’
‘Hit’
‘Light Tribe’
‘Who Says’
‘Swirl’
‘Freeze You’
‘Love Love Love’
‘My Roots’
–
‘It’s Probably That’
‘Sexy Scam’
‘Embrace’
Photos by Roycin D’souza
Shaa'ir + Func @ Blue Frog, Mumbai
Shaa'ir + Func @ Blue Frog, Mumbai
Shaa'ir + Func @ Blue Frog, Mumbai
Shaa'ir + Func @ Blue Frog, Mumbai
Shaa'ir + Func @ Blue Frog, Mumbai
Shaa'ir + Func @ Blue Frog, Mumbai
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