Alternative
Cultura Rock Records · 25 September 2026
Twenty-one tracks and 1:20:05 from a concert that ran close to three hours. On 4 March, Makovski marked twenty years of “Kradiaw” at the Palau de la Música Catalana with the five bands that have backed her over that time and some thirty guests, and the record opens with a 51-second “Intro” and the original line-up (David Martínez on drums, Juan Carlos Luque on bass, Bobbi Relac on guitar) going into “When The Dust Clears” (2:41).
The guests come in one at a time and each entrance moves the record onto different ground. Paul Fuster takes “Not In Love” (3:56) into dry country; the Quartet Brossa adds strings to “Avoiding You” (4:47), “Language” (4:43) and “Lava Love” (3:47); Javi Alonso, of Mohama Saz, brings out the lute on “Hunch of the Century” (3:55). Christina Rosenvinge sings “The Brotherhood”, Anni B Sweet “My Head is a Vampire” and Nina de Juan “James Dean’s Alive” (4:23), and Niña Coyote eta Chico Tornado leave “Reaching Out To You” (3:06) as the hardest thing played all night, and they do it inside the Palau de la Música.
Xavi Ollé recorded it, Paul Corkett mixed it and Shawn Joseph mastered it at Optimum Mastering, and the mix does not hide what happened. On “The Bastard and the Tramp” (5:02) Howe Gelb hit a technical problem and ended up at the piano, and that stays on the record. “No News” (4:07) is handed to Asier Etxeandía, who gives it a theatrical weight the song doesn’t carry in the studio, and “He’s Got The Power” (3:13) is played by The Mani-Las.
Of the twenty-nine songs played that night, the record holds twenty and an “Intro”, and nowhere does it say which ones were left out or on what grounds. “Chill Out Charles” and “So Far Sober” arrive fused into a single 4:56 track. A release presented as the document of a one-off celebration leaves more than an hour and a half of it out without a word of explanation.
It comes on digipak CD, double vinyl and digital, and the advance track was “I Live In A Boat” on 18 September, which closes the record (4:12) with every guest on stage. The tour takes Makovski to twenty cities and one Catalan date remains: the Cafè del Teatre in Lleida, on 16 January 2027.
Rating: 7.8/10
Text by Marçal Bonastre