Review: Rodrigo y Gabriela Bring Summer Tour To The Chicago Theatre

Jun 26, 2023 admin_bitlc Features, Music News, Reviews 0

---

By James Currie

Mexican born and bred musicians Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero have been making music together for many years now as the dynamic guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela. Something they’ve been doing long before setting out together to make their intense multilayered songs, back when they were in a heavy metal band making music in the vein of Metallica and other 80’s & 90’s metal bands they drew influence from. Today, you can still hear those influences within their shredding guitar leads and banging hooks that make this new flamenco style their own. This weekend Rodrigo and Gabriela brought that distinct sound to The Chicago Theatre on their, In Between Thoughts… A New World, tour.

The theatre was full of fans from way back to recent as one young fan I sat next too let me know, “I just found out about these guys (Rodrigo and Gabriela) from my roommate. She was playing their new album during a cookout we were having last month and the songs just stuck in my head.” She went on with, “I didn’t know who it was until the next day when I asked her. From them on I was hooked and she invited me to come to this show with her, so, here we are!”. They both seemed pretty excited about being here as they were definitely one of the louder responders to applause.

During this performance, we heard a lot of growth from Rodrigo and Gabriela as they seemed to separate themselves from each other more than usual. The stage was set with video walls, powerful white spot lights and rigging that differs from previous shows. We heard many new songs off the new album as well as “True Nature” was the second songs played after the intro and “Astrum In Corpore” kicked it off. As a matter of fact, we get the nearly the entire album, ‘In Between Thoughts… A New World’ track by track with others mixed in.

Gabriela perched herself on the risers of the stage more than Rodrigo. He seemed to be more animated almost making up for her lack of movement as he ran back and forth and took front and center during guitar leads bathed in harsh spot lights that didn’t seem to be planned. The video wall at the beginning of the show was unique but hard to see them and almost detracted from their performance. The visual were impressive and helped move the show along though as as my concert seat goers proved, made things more powerful as a visual aide.

Rodrigo and Gabriela are phenomenal musicians, there’s no doubt about that, but I can’t help but feel that having a backing band behind them mind have helped make this performance even better. The visuals seemed to fill in for more backing than should have been.  One of the highlights of the show being when they join together and have dueling guitar matches. This is something the audience loved as well as the cheering grew louder with each match. This of course is one of the things any fan of Rodrigo y Gabriela lusts for and they didn’t disappoint as they performed several of these.

For more on Rodrigo y Gabriela, click here

For photos from the show, click here

 

---

---

---