Northern Winter Beat 2025, Aalborg review - The Courettes, Dungen and Lubomyr Melnyk confront ideas of how to play

The exhortations don’t seem necessary as the audience is already letting off the steam which has built up in anticipation of a full-bore show. Nonetheless, The Courettes’ Flávia Couri knows higher levels of excitement are there to be tapped, that it’s possible to get the crowd to liberate themselves from any restraint they may have left. Limits are there to be pushed.

She calls out. They respond. She sings. They sing along. She gestures, beckoning for more. They howl. It’s not enough though. Then, boom. She’s off the stage, burrowing through onlookers and on the bar, holding-up her guitar to strafe those present with playing evoking The Sonics, Link Wray, the reverb of surf instrumentals and a punk-rock attack.

Flávia Couri is one half of The Courettes. Behind his drum kit, Martin Thorsen cannot be so mobile but still he gives it more than seems possible. His cravat is limp, soaked in sweat. While their get-up-and-go oomph is paramount, what above all defines this Danish duo is their songs. Garage rock is the framing, is classic pop: whether fast and melodic or slow and soulful, each song is instantly impactful. The Courettes love a tune. Despite being a duo, they sound like a full band. (pictured right, Elias Rønnenfelt at Northern Winter Beat 2025. Niels-Peter Fjeldsø Greve)

Their new LP, The Soul Of…The Fabulous Courettes, is just out and they are celebrating its release by playing the Northern Winter Beat festival in Aalborg, in Denmark’s north: they live to the south and this is their closest city. The show at Abzalon Event Factory is a triumph. The Courettes play up to 250 shows a year and, yet, nothing is by rote. They clearly have an unalloyed, fan-like, adoration for what they do. In turn, their fans are devoted to what they do too. Last week, Steven Van Zandt declared the new album’s “California” “the coolest song in the world.” The Crystals’ La La Brooks guests on The Soul Of…. On board for mixing is Richard Gottehrer, who did sonic magic in the Sixties for, amongst others, The Angels and The McCoys. He also worked with the early Blondie and Go-Go's. The Courettes know what they are tapping into. Nonetheless, this walloping live manifestation confirms they are about a here-and-now presence not revivalism.

On their own, The Courettes would be memorable enough. But this is just one of the three-day festival’s shows, a single highlight amongst many. The programming seems diverse: Northern Winter Beat 2025 features Ukrainian pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, US-based opera-skirting stylist Zola Jesus, rough Faroese punks Joe & The Shitboys, pin-sharp German punks Die Verlierer, former Pussy Riot member Diana Burkot, Swedish psych-nauts Dungen, the Scots/Danish folk-edged singer-songwriter Clarissa Connelly and more. A big draw is the solo incarnation of Elias Rønnenfelt, more usually seen fronting Danish post-punks iceage (pictured left, Lubomyr Melnyk at Northern Winter Beat 2025. Ellen Høg Thuesen)

According to the festival’s founder Mads Mulvad, the threads are linked by the wish to “present a perspective on music taking genres to another place, music which tries to confront ideas of how to play. We’re trying to present a lot of music where it would be hard to draw an audience in Aalborg at individual shows on a regular weekend day even if the artist or band has something going on. It can work in a festival setting. The festival is a collaboration between the Studenterhuset [which Mads manages] and two other venues in the city, Abzalon and Huset.” He doesn’t say it, but Mads is doubtless booking acts he wants to see: he is at as many shows as possible.

The Studenterhuset, a hub for the city’s university student population, has a large hall and a stage in its bar area. A ten-minute walk east, Huset is part of a community arts centre. A similar distance, Abzalon is a conversion of what appears to be a former machine shop or vehicle repair works. There are also specially organised concerts in churches, the beneath-street-level medieval cloister the Gråbrødreklosteret and the Utzon Centre, designed by the Aalborg-raised Sydney Opera House architect Jørn Utzon. The festival is about showcasing and using the city. (pictured right, Zola Jesus at Northern Winter Beat 2025. Ellen Høg Thuesen)

“We’re the biggest city in northern Denmark,” continues Mads. “To the south is Aarhus, twice as big with twice the amount of students. Depending on how you count it, Aalborg is the third or fourth largest city in Demark. The Studenterhuset has been part of the city’s DNA since it opened in 1996, and concerts have always been the major activity. All activities in the house are open to the public, everyone.”

Northern Winter Beat, then, has been formulated to bring together under one umbrella a raft of vital music which would not necessarily be enough of a magnet if programmed as single, one-off bills and, at the same time, weave it all into the fabric of the city

Beyond the vision behind it, a main underpinning is the nature of Denmark’s cultural landscape. “The Studenterhuset is an oddball in some ways as not only are we a student house linked to the university, we are also a regional venue,” explains Mads. “There are what are institutionally defined as 18 regional venues in Denmark. This means we get some funding from the city and also from the state arts council, which helps make it possible to do Northern Winter Beat on this scale. It could exist as a festival, or the Studenterhuset as a venue, without this backing but the activities would be less and have to be more commercialised. Also, the reason we started the festival in 2013 was to do something in the part of the year where there weren't many concerts. It’s grown, and now we have a lot of wonderful volunteers working around the concerts and the bars.” (pictured left, Kanaan at Northern Winter Beat 2025. Ellen Høg Thuesen)

It works. Pernillle Mikkelsen is a Northern Winter Beat regular. Buttonholed before Elias Rønnenfelt plays the crypt alongside a human skeleton in a stone cist, she says “the festival means a lot to me because I love music, and this a great opportunity to hear music you don’t know already. You need to be into music, have an open mind. I’ve had so many great experiences at Northern Winter Beat – one of the best was when Elias, who’s playing here now, when he was first here with his band iceage. They were just young kids. People come to the festival from other cities: Aarhus, Copenhagen.” This year, Slovenia is the most-distant place from which tickets have been bought.

In practice, all this results in a festival with a cool which doesn’t need expressing. On that tack, the solo Elias Rønnenfelt exudes a detachment which seems to born from a discomfort with being the focus of attention: a not untypical conflict in those choosing to place themselves before audiences. In the crypt, this dissipates when he spontaneously takes requests. A title is mentioned, he says yes, and plays it. No fuss. This is solo. Later, at the Utzon Centre, with his bassist and drummer, it’s more formal. The two performances come on the back of the release last November of his first solo album Heavy Glory. Irrespective of his membership of iceage, it is not an album which instantly hits home. Americana-based, it posits him on a line between 1965-to-1966 Bob Dylan and Nick Cave (on the album, he covers Spacemen 3’s “Sound of Confusion” and Townes Van Zandt’s “No Place to Fall”). OK, but not intrinsically necessary or interesting. Experiencing it live though is something else. It makes sense. His presence is magnetic. The touchstones have become The Rolling Stones of “Wild Horses,” its parent album Sticky Fingers and bits of Let It Bleed with an incongruous, though seamlessly incorporated, Oasis chug. Curious, but genuinely compelling. (pictured right, Dungen at Northern Winter Beat 2025. Ellen Høg Thuesen)

Equally charismatic is the festival’s opener, Lubomyr Melnyk. Originally from Ukraine and now living in Sweden he plays what he calls “continuous music.” Sat at a grand piano in the mostly 14th-century Budolfi Kirke, he plays three lengthy pieces where unbroken arpeggios interweave to create overtones: as if two, sometimes three, pianos are present. Explaining the first piece, he says “it’s a little like a mandala, created in the moment – then it will be gone.” There are also digressions on the need to support artists directly rather than through third-party sales outlets, that music should not be listened to with ear buds and, naturally, Putin and The Russian Federation. At the end he plays the familiar “Butterfly” in a two-piano arrangement (the second piano is heard though playback) and warns “this is going to be a real mind expander. Hope you enjoy this more psychedelic version of ‘Butterfly’.” It is, indeed, mesmerising.

A couple of hours later, the US-born Zola Jesus is in the Studenterhuset and also at a piano. Her lineage is Ukrainian and the last song is “Plyve Kacha” (“Пливе кача”), a Ukrainian folk song obliquely about a departing soldier. Before this, there is a cover of “In Heaven,” from David Lynch’s Eraserhead, sung in tribute to the recently departed director. A couple of her earlier songs, she says, are about suicide. Overall, this forceful performance evokes Céline Dion (NB: this is not a bad thing) were she suffused in an outlook informed by Diamanda Galas. (pictured left, Clarissa Connelly at Northern Winter Beat 2025. Ellen Høg Thuesen)

Less challenging, though just as powerful, and on the same stage a couple of days on are Norwegian three-piece Kanaan. Like Lubomyr Melnyk, they play three lengthy pieces. Initially, it seems they are coming from a perspective akin to fellow Norwegians Elephant9 or Supersilent: taking jazz-type playing and shipping it off to the outer edges of rock. For their second and third instrumentals Reine Fiske, guitarist from Sweden’s Dungen, joins them. The final workout is a kosmiche pounder nodding to Space Ritual Hawkwind, synthesiser bloops and all. A head trip.

Dungen themselves follow after a couple of hours. Seeing them play without being tied to a recent album is interesting as it brings a fluidity. Then again, the unshackled approach may be do with the fact that the sound check was the rehearsal for the show. Whatever the reason, it is a blistering set drawing mostly from their sixth album, 2010’s Skit i allt, and later. There is also a dive back to their 2004 international breakthrough album Ta det lugnt with "Festival" and set closer "Panda," which has two far-out, improvised codas tacked on after the song as such has finished. All three members of Kanaan are at the front going nuts. (pictured right, Virta at Northern Winter Beat 2025. Niels Peter Fjeldsø Greve)

Lower key, but equally arresting, Clarissa Connelly plays the Studenterhuset’s bar area. Living in Copenhagen, she was born in Scotland. Her 2024 Warp Records album World of Work, her second, is loosely in a Julia Holter bag. However, this live iteration is more organic, more sinuous and more warm. Here, she is in a similar stratospheric plane to Linda Perhacs. At Utzon, Finland’s Virta also explore the zone where atmosphere gives way to space, with their jazz-based, electronica-reinforced compositions becoming increasingly immersive as their set unfolds. Behind them is a massive window looking out onto the Limfjord, the waterway defining Aalborg’s northern limits – Virta become at one with this external environment.

The scope of Winter Beat’s dedication to “music taking genres to another place, music which tries to confront ideas of how to play” is underlined in the Studenterhuset’s bar by Joe & The Shitboys, Faroese punks whose set list of minute-or-so songs takes up two hand-written columns of a sheet of A4 paper. Their fun but very earnest assault suggests the early Black Flag were it spliced to rap-punk. At another instant on this stage, former Pussy Riot member Diana Burkot enacts a different form of musical assault, assisted by dentist-drill beats and techno-derived heart-attack palpitations. (pictured left, Joe & The Shitboys at Northern Winter Beat 2025. Ellen Høg Thuesen)

Over the three days, the seeming stylistic disparities between the individual acts booked for the festival evaporate. This is not eclecticism. It is, definitely, about pushing beyond boundaries – about artists and bands who don’t acknowledge or recognise limits: in the music, and in themselves. Magnificent.

For Mads Mulvad, the determinant of whether the festival is a success “depends on the audience. You need the audience to be there and be happy about the programme. In the main, the feedback is positive but there’s some from folks saying they are not happy as they have to choose between one show and another.” And, really, if that is the most critical feedback, then Northern Winter Beat is an unalloyed success. Being there is the proof of that particular pudding.

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