Welcome to the third day of rehearsals! It’s time to see what the second semi has in store for us!

Armenia
It looks like someone messed up and never sent Armenia any stage information, because they were really determined to not use it. Srbuk has a great voice and she does come across as very edgy and with commanding presence, but she is entirely alone on stage, and it’s dark and empty throughout most of her performance, with mostly some monochromatic effects and red light splashes. The last part of the song uses more of the stage, and there’s a light explosion in the background as well as fire all around her. It’s effective at least in creating a contrast between that and the first two thirds of the song, but she’ll have to work very hard to keep the audience interested enough to even get there.

I imagine she’d be a juries’ darling, but it does feel both underwhelming and just a bit frustrating. It’s one thing to do the wrong thing for a song, but it almost feels like they barely bothered and it’s hard to ignore that they could have done so much more with this.

“So how have you been enjoying your time in Tel Aviv so far?”

Ireland
Ireland is a bit of a mixed bag. While I wasn’t initially sure that that Sarah’s personality works with the song, it actually works quite well, but unsurprisingly, being Ireland, it does suffer a bit from the sensory overload syndrome.

The idea is very cute – we do have a diner as promised – a small set up middle stage with three chairs, and she has two backings / dancers dressed up as what I assume is waitresses – but it’s done in a nice, not cheap way. The backdrop is a massive wall of popart, which fits the vibe but is also means a lot of color at all times. There are the occasional appearances of the number 22 there – shocking, I know – and her own comics alter ego, which is a nice touch. But there are also some really odd shots – there is an entire section that is shot showing her back, even though the camera switches shots several times, and that part definitely doesn’t work. It looks odd and out of place.

On the other hand, there’s a really cool shot of Sarah lying across the diner table with the camera shooting from above, and the LED floor morphs into a starry skies, making Sarah lost in her dream while floating with her diner in the stars. It’s probably the standout visual moment of this.

She sings this well, and the vibe is cutesy and pleasant. It still needs a lot of work and I am not entirely sure of its chances just yet, but it’s easy to watch it and smile.

Latvia
We were surprised to have Latvia starting when we were expecting Moldova, but at least in the corner where I am sitting no one was complaining. Latvia retained their national final setup in terms of the intimate band performance and the screen aspect ratio. It is in full color, though, and with lots of yellow gold and red gold light specs, which make the setting feel very warm and even a little magical.

It’s exactly the performance this song needs, with the camerawork paced perfectly – never staying on a shot too long or not long enough. But like all mellow songs, it will depend a lot on how it looks in the sequence. On a personal level, I can only hope it will have enough people noticing it, because it really comes across in a lovely way.

Switzerland
I’m sure you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that we were waiting quite impatiently for this one, and there was a lot to absorb. He has four backing dancers in red while he’s in black, which matches the color scheme on stage – lots of black, white and red. There’s less dancing that you might have expected in it, but the entire thing is a dance and it’s about how everything interacts – there are a lot of interesting camera shot transitions and screen layout changes, as well as backdrop color changes that work on creating contrast in some moments of the song. There are a lot of great moments that use interesting framing and changes of angles and direction, and it creates a dynamic feel all the way through, and it is paced well, matching the pacing of the beat between the slow and fast bits.

I’d use less red in the backdrop because they do get lost in it before the white backdrop switches kick in, but that’s nitpicking. The bigger problem at this point is the vocals – not so much in the sense that he’s not a great vocalist, which he isn’t. But because it should have been quite expected that vocals are not his best feature, this could have used more than one backing vocalist. It’s too late for that, obviously, but even with the one they have they could do more – currently he’s too low in the mix and doesn’t really provide coverage for Luca in parts where he sounds very exposed.

Either way: it’s not a winner, but it will have to try very hard to not be in the top 5, and I hope the Swiss are happy with that.