Twenty One Pilots Prove They're One of the Most Important Bands of Today at Sziget
The American duo Twenty One Pilots showed at Sziget why they're one of the most important active bands, with Croatian fans crossing borders to see them.
The American duo Twenty One Pilots showed at Sziget why they're one of the most important active bands, with Croatian fans crossing borders to see them.
The performance of the American duo Twenty One Pilots at Sziget confirmed that this is not just a fan obsession, but one of the most important active bands of today. The second festival evening in Budapest was almost entirely dedicated to their concert, with attendees coming specifically for this one act.
Before them, the Scottish rock band Biffy Clyro took the stage, facing the unenviable task of playing to an audience that had mostly come for the headliner. Their performance was solid, occasionally very good, with a more traditional, slightly garage-rock sound. That sound would fit right in at INmusic, so it's actually surprising they weren't at Jarun this year.
Things only picked up towards the end of their set. "Mountains," one of their most recognizable singles, finally reached a wider part of the field, and in the final fifteen minutes, the band finally won over an audience that was no longer just listening out of politeness. "Bubbles" was the standout track.
Twenty One Pilots consists of Tyler Joseph, the main creative force, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and a man who, as needed, raps, sings, screams, plays bass, piano, or ukulele within the same song, and Josh Dun, the drummer and engine of the concert machine. In their seventeen years of existence, they've built a catalog that's almost impossible to neatly categorize by genre. It blends rock, pop, hip-hop, electronics, reggae rhythms, emo tension, gospel, and Christian motifs.
For fans, it's much more than a string of catchy songs. For years, the band has woven a complex story about the conflict between the individual and the system of control through their albums, videos, stage design, colors, symbols, and details. The narrative begins with the album Blurryface, then develops into the fictional world of Trench and the city of Dema, which is interestingly depicted in pre-war Kharkiv as a closed, gray, authoritarian space ruled by nine bishops.
Their concert is a production spectacle with fireworks, flames at the back of the stage, copious amounts of confetti, forays into the crowd, and drumming on fans' heads. Since there are only two of them on stage, much of the performance relies on pre-recorded tracks and live arrangements that Josh Dun controls with effect pedals.
During the "Drum Show," Dun climbed a service tower where his drums were set up and played several songs from a height of over ten meters. Meanwhile, Joseph moved along the edges of the crowd, descended towards fans, and hugged them. At the very end, during "Trees," both descended into the crowd and climbed onto small platforms with drums held up by the audience.
To bring them closer to an older audience, one need only consider "Tear in My Heart." At first glance, it's one of their simplest love songs, almost joyful compared to the darker parts of their music. But in the middle of a romantic car ride, Joseph suddenly starts venting at his own government for not using his taxes to fix potholes.
In the original, he sings: "not using my taxes to fill holes with more cement." In other words, the government isn't using his tax money to fill potholes with cement. At Sziget, both the adults who pay taxes and the children who will one day enter the same tax system sang this part of tax dissatisfaction together.
It remains a mystery why no one has brought this duo to Croatia yet. This is a band that fills large halls, performs in venues with similar acoustics and production as Zagreb's arena, like Vienna's Stadthalle, and has fans among children, teenagers, and young people. And I mean truly young people, not that stretchy Croatian political category where "youth" includes everyone up to 40 because parties lack grassroots support.
That such an audience exists here was evident without market research. While making his way to the front rows, the author of this text greeted an Italian from Bari in Croatian and praised a Davor Šuker jersey. Later, he mentioned he's in a relationship with a Herzegovinian from Zagreb, which explains his language skills.
On the way out, he also met a group of young women who had come from Croatia solely for the Twenty One Pilots concert. "If there are kids and young people who get on buses for a band, cross the border, and stand for hours on a dusty festival field in Budapest, then maybe the problem isn't that there's no audience. The problem is that they're too rarely given what they want to hear," the text reads.
To echo Hari Rončević's message: even if they're punks, they're still kids. Give them culture, organize concerts, and let them see their bands closer than in Budapest.
