The Golden Lemons - "More Than A Feeling"
(Buback, from 8th February)
A gift that can make a politically troubled pop music, is the comforting feeling of being on the right page. "Hate / I blow Bayer away / The coolest is / I'm right", sang, for example, the Kettcar precursor ... but alive in the nineties, without irony. At the time, the Golden Lemons were about to politicize themselves with the record "The Manslaughter" without becoming harsh and slogan-style or too homely.
From the idea that melody and rhythm are first a transport medium for the lyrics, the Hamburg band decided to take part at the same time - to produce instead sounds that show that people here enjoy great sound and improvisation. The Golden Lemons work on the present and on their own contradictions, tirelessly. The better state is always included as a promise in their music.
"More Than A Feeling" follows the electronic sounds of "The Making of the Night" (2009) and combines them with stoic repetitiveness. In "Catacomb", for example: a subterranean-threatening bullying; Lemon singer Schorsch Cameroon quotes from an imaginary dialogue with a free-wheeling concerned citizen: "People would now demand to build a fence to protect themselves / That's what everybody wants / A plain lie". The people and their supposed desire for walls are always on this twelfth lemon album.
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The play "Visitation" samples the worker-songwriter Ernst Busch ("Listen, they're going into the field / And screaming for nation and race / This is the war of the rulers of the world / against the working class"), then two minutes of analytical postpunk : "I people and body / I feel state / Woe to me / The will to act". The bush quote is a tribute and at the same time marks a difference: The old-fashioned left-wing bush knew the masses behind it, while Schorsch Cameroon continues to play the cussing adolescent, a one-of-a-kind who knows more than dull adults; among other things, that autonomy can not exist.
Young people are right in this case, even though they have been making music for over thirty years. This band always tells directly from the mixture, so that an impression of self-assurance does not want to adjust. (8.0) Benjamin Moldenhauer
The Specials - "Encore"
(Iceland / Universal, since 1 February)
Oh dear, please do not! It was about the spontaneous reaction to a new album by the British ska revival band The Specials, the first with studio material in 20 years. Reunited, at least in those parts that have not quarreled hopelessly or tragically died, were the specials since 2009, but were content to perform live. OK then! Because in truth, if you subtract from all subsequent transfiguration, the two only regular Specials albums from 1979 and 1980 were rather wobbly in content, held together by a lot of chutzpah and 2-tone groove. Then again: If the situation in Britain is just as bad as many pop artists are feeling in the leaky Thatcher years, which provoked punk, ska and the mod revival, then does not the hour of the specials have to beat again?
Andreas Borcholtes playlist KW 6
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Playlist on Spotify
1 The Specials: Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys
2 The Style Council: Internationalists
3 The Golden Lemons: Useful Disasters
4 Jadu: Death Strip
5 Laughter: How do we find each other?
6 Karen O: Woman
7 Boy Harsher: Face The Fire
8 The Lemonheads: Unfamiliar
9 Girlpool: Hire
10 Cherry Glazerr: That's Not My Real Life
Nah, nothing has to, but everything can. And miraculously, "Encore" can do a lot. For example, be funky. It starts with the first tune, a disco-turned cover version of the 1973 Equals classic "Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys", which adds a touch of Style Council's working class anthem "Internationalists" - probably thanks to Paul Weller's guitarist Steve Craddock , who supports the original specials Terry Hall (vocals), Lynval Golding (guitar) and Horace Panter (bass) in several places. One sighs with relief: no cheap ska-infusion squinting at the core audience, but an age-appropriate fat accumulation in the sound.
The disco-funk rhythms continue when Jamaica-based Golding in BLM (Black Lives Matter) chats out his bitter experiences of racism and discrimination in England. A very timely update of "The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum)" by Hall's post-specials band Fun Boy Three eases the mood a bit, before it goes back with "10 Commandments" again: The band passes the (spoken ) Vocals here to Saffiyah Khan, the young woman who protested against nationalism in the demo of the English Defense League (EDL) - wearing a specials T-shirt. She makes a furious feminist replica of Prince Buster's inglorious Ska hymn "The 10 Commandments of Man" (1965), which became synonymous with machismo and misogyny in the scene.
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There are a few failures and trivialities in this not-for-vain "encore" stretch of an album (for example, the well-intentioned but lyrically incongruous "We Sell Hope"), but when Terry Hall in "The Life And Times (Of A Man Called Depression) "transcended with humble-self-analytical murmurs ska, funk and jazz - and the band madly quotes" Riders On The Storm ", one is reconciled with this comeback that knotted some loose ends very neatly. (7.5) Andreas Borcholte
Beirut - "Gallipoli"
(4AD / Beggars / Indigo, since February 1)
So now Gallipoli, a small town in Puglia: It is the new longing place of Beirut mastermind Zach Condon, Americans and Berliners who has sung in his songs already half the world. There, in the heel of the Italian boot, he is said to have experienced the key experience to the fifth album of the band: After he and his fellow musicians observed a kind of procession move, Condon began to compose and fell into a trance-like songwriting session - so tells the front man. Not only "Gallipoli", the title track, but also the idea for the sound of the album was born: he allows the imperfection of the early years more, yes, even challenges them.
Listened to on the radio
Wednesdays at 23 o'clock there is the Hamburger Web-Radio ByteFM a listening-mixtape with many songs from the discussed records and highlights from the personal playlist of Andreas Borcholte.
The band used broken amplifiers and tape machines, did not erase amp crackle and detuned note. As with the first albums Condon played the complete brass section alone. In fact, it rumbles and creaks more, as it once did on "Gulag Orkestar" or "The Flying Club Cup". Nevertheless, the trumpets and Condon's voice gently carry the listener through the album - from "Gallipoli" over the Lake Constance island of Mainau ("On Island Mainau") to "Corfu".
But what's missing are songs that get stuck, songs like "Nantes", "Postcards from Italy" or "No No No", which always existed on their predecessors. Somewhere on the journey, this feeling for folk pop hits has been lost. Not even the slowly increasing hymn "Varieties of Exile", the single "Landslide" or the title song can be deceived.
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Condon wanted to turn his inside out and shape him, he says. However, he loses himself too much in recurring motifs and repetitive elements. Too many melodies and rhythms rippling there. The polyphonic "Gauze für Zah" sounds over two and a half minutes, but unfortunately without singing. After all, thanks to the dreamy feeling of wanderlust, which is still inherent in the music of Beirut, the songs mix to a pleasant Hintergrundberieselung - but for an outstanding album is not enough this time. (7.0) Lenne Kaffka
Rating: From "0" (absolute disaster) to "10" (absolute classic)