Germany's best power rock trio Die Nerven, led by star producer Max Rieger, have been frequent guests of the Popcast editorial team. On Wir Waren Hier (their seventh album, if we've counted correctly), they continue their dystopian vision of the future of the world; the ten tracks, some of which are extremely noisy as usual, are a single swan song to humanity. Lyricist, singer, guitarist and producer Max Rieger is in absolute top form in all his functions, his anger, disgust and frustration in the face of a present of destruction and wars is expressed in so many different ways that the album builds up an arc of tension that holds you captivated until the very last note.
International Music take it all in their stride. Seen through Hans Arp's monocle, life is child's play and worries simply giggle away. Against a backdrop of competently realized, thickly applied folk-pop anthems, which on the new album are sometimes interspersed with shirt-sleeved Americana elements, sometimes with their typical Weird Folk influences and occasionally decorated with winking Neue Deutsche Welle quotes. Endless Rüttenscheid, the title of the album, is a kind of condescending reference to a district in their hometown of Essen, an inconspicuous but densely populated city in the center of Europe that has been severely affected by gentrification. Mocking irony is the shelter of this extraordinary band, as a glance at the artwork reveals: the three gentlemen are also somewhat strange visually, but always friendly (smiling), in coordinated suits, purple ties, armed with a single 12-string guitar, which, like the entire production, was certainly not cheap, because in the end only worldly things count: “Less is more, nothing is much, knees are broken, hairstyle sucks”.
The door opener for the Munich duo Nitsch is undoubtedly the fact that one of the two musicians has become world-famous as a songwriter and guitarist for the English band Franz Ferdinand, although the press release from the great Berlin Staatsakt label conceals this fact with an understatement that is rare in the industry. Nick McCarthy has not only brought his fame with him, but also his talent as a songwriter. Together with Graz-based musician and actor Niklas Mitteregger, however, he avoids overly direct references to his previous band. Instead, their debut album Bar von Josefine features a series of relaxed, mid-tempo pop songs that seem to have been produced without any pressure. The album is written entirely in German, which is remarkable, as is the Brit's virtually accent-free German, a notoriously difficult language to learn.
Jens Massel aka Senking from Cologne and Eduard Costea aka DYL from Cluj-Napoca, an extremely lively student city in Romania, have known each other for a long time and are now collaborating for the second time on a joint EP, Diving Saucer Attack. The six tracks, two of which were produced individually, demonstrate both the duo's shared interest in dubby, adventurous electronic music and the productive friction created by the subtle differences between their respective approaches. Even less than their individual tracks, the pair reveal themselves to be shrewd composers whose sonic narratives are full of unexpected twists and turns.
The German-Italian trio Principess from Munich show the world how far you can go with bass, drums, a few synths and an organ. The light-footed beat and the three women's lyrics, sometimes in German, sometimes in Italian, often in three voices, reveal a very entertaining talent for combining a critical, feminist, but also humorous and self-deprecating attitude. Rounded off by a sparkling production full of catchy pop melodies, the three musicians point the way to a better future, even in South Tyrol!
