“Thank you guys for dancing on the bench in the front row!”. When drummer Asker Bjork tells me and my best mate these wonderful words I feel a mixture of pride and bewilderment. I’m proud of getting into a dancing mood on a rainy, cold and lazy Monday night but I am amazed of how we could have possibly danced to Boho Dancer. Their music is anything you can think of but danceable. It’s dark, gothic, eerie, it’s music for restless souls running away from a spirited and slightly childish life. How come did we manage to get into the groove?

It’s called magic, that marvellous feeling of getting transported into another dimension. It’s banal to define Boho Dancer music as simply Scandinavian. So what? Abba, The Hives and Kings of Convenience are from Scandinavia too. That doesn’t mean they play exactly the same kind of rock. Crucially, Boho Dancer are from Denmark which is quite a peculiar land. If you ever get the chance to go to the Camden- like borough of Christiania in Copenhagen, you will get what I mean. It’s the free spirit, independent yet sad and lonely feeling of the capital which makes Boho Dancer’s music so powerful and enchanting. Promoting their beautiful Gemini, the band is both entertaining and shy, slightly intimidated by a loyal crowd who support and adore them. When singer Ida cutely admits how her ‘eerie visions of volcanoes and weird landscapes’ have been inspired by a boat trip via Camden canal, I suddenly feel home. I’m neither English nor Danish but the idea of a haunted Camden defies any geographical border. The very intimate but extremely powerful set includes also gems like Fictional Reasons and Me Your God which receive an incredible clapping of hands from their fans. Personal highlight of their performance? I’d love to say their amazing instrumental part halfway through the show, however I would pick up their incredible Arcade Fire’s cover of My Body Is a Cage, even superior than the original. To improve any Arcade Fire’s song is a pretty impossible task, however the trio manages to make it sound even more dramatic and desperate. Better in other words.

Few words of respect and admiration to opening act House of Hats. You’d better check their name out and write it down on your agenda. The six piece from Brighton’s debut This Love will be released on the 24^th of March and tracks such as Joanna and Wonderland show how their exquisite modern folk will be destined to great things this 2014. Amazing vocals and perfect harmony, House of Hats showed how Mumford & Sons lesson can be assimilated in the best possible way.

Overall, an amazing evening in the tiny 229 venue of Great Portland Street. You don’t need electric guitars and crazed drumming to capture people’s attention and imagination. House of Hats and Boho Dancer show intimacy and shyness are the next big things.

Silvia Rucchin