2024-06-20 Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, Barcelona, Spain

Scheduled: 21:00 Local Start Time 21:14 / End Time 00:13

Info & Setlist | Venue

32-song setlist for the first night in Barcelona features the tour premiere of "Radio Nowhere" and the final tour performance of "The Power Of Prayer". "Cover Me" also returns to the set.

Jake R

Easily my least favorite of the three Spanish shows I've seen so far (although still quite a bit better than the spring 2023 shows). Bruce's voice was quite a bit worse than Madrid 3 although definitely still better than Madrid 2, and the setlist was worse than either (of course part of that is my fault for seeing so many shows close together—but even a lot of the wildcard choices were pretty rough going tonight.) Still, plenty of highlights and a very good time. Bruce seemed in a good mood (lots of dancing, joking around with the pit) although things got a little rushed-feeling towards the back end until the great extra encore. Max was absolutely unbelievable tonight—he always is but that opening run was absolutely punishing and he just killed it. I'll add that despite the vocal troubles he actually sounded great in the falsetto range—the ending to The River was breathtaking but he always went "up" during Cover Me, Nightshift, and a couple other places to great effect. Song notes: -Cover Me sounded really good again, especially Bruce's opening guitar bit—I wouldn't be surprised to see this one get rotated in pretty regularly going forward. -Radio Nowhere was rough rough rough—some of his worst vocals of the night and a couple moments where the band really wasn't quite together rounding the turns. Good to hear a latter-day debut but I don't think the song won any new fans tonight. Steve sounded great on it though. -Crowd was VERY into Ghosts from the start, lots of clapping from the very beginning. (In general I noticed the Barcelona fans liked to start clapping along especially during the last part of songs—at times a little distractingly! -Darkness is such an incredible song—in a way one of his most underrated I think. It should really be on every Best Of compilation, and is the far greater song IMO than Promised Land despite getting played so occasionally in recent years (decades?). Luckily his voice came through for it. -Power Of Prayer sounded a lot smoother, vocally and otherwise, than the debut—I'd much rather hear Priest or Janey obviously but this is a lot better than Letter To You in the slot. Bruce dedicated it to "the t-shirt people" (there were a ton of fans in the front of the pit wearing matching t-shirts, not sure what was going on). -Sunny Day is just so awful—it's a dreadful song made much, much worse live. The most annoying thing in the catalogue. Worse still, he did the kiddy-karaoke bit tonight too (although the kid seemed sufficiently unprepared that it was cut mercifully short). I really think I'd rather him just play one fewer song. -When the Nugs comes out, give Backstreets from this show a listen—at the end of the spoken section he kind of fell into a revery, very moving, did a couple extra repetitions but changing the lyric to "until it ends." Reminded me of the speech from Kilkenny '13—the older you get the more it means. Then he did a rather lengthy wordless vocal improvisation before jumping back into the song. -Maybe my imagination but I'm pretty sure She's The One was played notably faster than usual—kind of gave it some new energy but maybe a little less note-perfect than usual as a result. There was also an issue where Jake's sound wasn't working at the start of his solo. -Do Europeans not care about Thunder Road or what? Have been amazed how many people sat for it all three shows. I can really see why he plays Born In The USA here though; got a way bigger response than anything else again. -Rockin' was a wonderful surprise and not a rush-job at all—felt like a "true encore" which is the absolute perfect place for that song, I don't like it at all in the main set but it's a perfect rock and roll dessert.

Brucebase Wiki

Site Navigation