Carters

Carters turned Sunday into a pop night

With light-up wristbands, guest dancers and a run through pop from the nineties to today, Carters packed Jazz Café Escazú with The POP Night.

An ordinary Sunday doesn't usually end with a whole room singing Backstreet Boys with a glowing wristband on. On October 25, at Jazz Café Escazú, it did. Carters, the Costa Rican band that has spent almost ten years turning rock and pop classics into a party, brought The POP Night in full-band format, a special that runs through pop from the nineties to today's hits.

On stage was Carters' full lineup: Jose Pérez, Juan Manuel Rodriguez, Roger Rojas, Beto Duran, Guillermo Artavia and Liz Villalobos, with Juan Alberto Diaz and Sharow Granera on backing vocals. The band went all in: for the first time it handed out light-up wristbands to the crowd and opened the stage to guests. Iriabelle Gonzalez and Stephanie Vega added their voices, and Krystel Brenes took the drum kit for a few songs.

Dancers Alexa Aguilar and Ariana Monge, from the Bianco & Mainieri academy and directed by Mariana Barquero, turned several songs into choreography: leaps, spins and high kicks inches from the drum kit, with the band never losing the groove. The screen behind the stage cycled through the acts being honored, from One Direction to Backstreet Boys and Maroon 5, while smoke jets and a mirror ball finished the picture.

The set opened with «Rock DJ» and moved through Bruno Mars, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Harry Styles, Britney Spears and Katy Perry before a closing stretch of pure nineties nostalgia, with «MMMBop», «I Want It That Way» and «Bye Bye Bye», all the way to a final «Uptown Funk».

Down on the floor, the room answered from the first song. Full tables, people on their feet, phones put away now and then to sing with arms in the air and, when the wristbands lit up at once, the feeling of being at a much bigger show. To close, the band came down for a photo with the whole audience, an ending that sums up the night.

Photos by Giodleone / Setlist, from the pit and between the tables at Jazz Café.