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La Oreja de Van Gogh began with a college band formed by four students residing in San Sebastián Basque Country, Spain named Pablo Benegas, Álvaro Fuentes, Xabi San Martín and Haritz Garde. Originally named Los Sin Nombre (Those Without Name in English), the nascent quartet began by recording covers of songs by bands like U2, Pearl Jam and Nirvana while playing their first shows around their university campus. However, once they began writing their own material together, each member found that their songs would sound better with a female vocalist up front, and they met the perfect candidate at a party in the form of Amaia Montero. After hearing her sing Sinéad O'Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” the band successfully convinced her to join them, where her first act as singer was to change their name from Los Sin Nombre to La Oreja de Van Gogh (The Ear Of Van Gogh).
The band began rehearsing and writing together almost immediately afterwards, and proved themselves by winning a talent competition at a music festival held in their native San Sebastián. The prize was studio time where they recorded their first demo tape, which got them signed to Epic Records mere months after they started sending it to record labels all over Spain. In 1998, their debut album “Dile Al Sol” was released and was an immediate critical and commercial smash, selling over 800’000 copies in their home country and securing the band’s reputation as the next big thing to come out of Spain. For the better part of a decade the band continued to release critically and commercially acclaimed albums, and were even able to come back from the departure of Montero in 2007, recruiting Leire Martinez to front the band and releasing their fifth album “A las cinco en el Astoria” the following year. To this very day they remain a band at the top of their game, and for that, they come highly recommended.
Catching a concert by Latin Grammy Award-winning band La Oreja de Van Gogh outside of Spain or Latin America is a rare treat, and everyone in the audience the night I saw them knew it. As a result, the atmosphere was electric, almost crackling, as everyone chattered excitedly whilst we waited for the band to come out on stage and for the show to begin. They were worth the wait. The stage set up may have been simple – just the musicians and their instruments, no fancy tricks or gimmicks – but that just meant that the music was the focus, as it should have been. And it was far from a boring performance; if anything, the simplicity of the show made it all the more intimate, even for those of us who were not right at the front of the crowd. The band members were all positioned near the front of the stage, and lead singer Leire Martínez walked and danced right at the stage's edge, singing directly to individual audience members. They opened with Rosas, from their 2003 album Lo Que Te Conté Mientras Te Hacías la Dormida. La Playa, another of the band's biggest hits, came about halfway through the set; during it, Martínez traded off lines with the audience, and listening to a room full of people confidently singing out the Spanish lyrics was one of the most exciting moments of my life.
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