Listened to: The pop albums of the week with Burna Boy, The Killers, Bright Eyes, Sneaks

Burna Boy - "Twice As Tall"

(Spaceship / Warner Music, since August 14th)

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Just looking at the album cover it is clear: Even if you could now, you don't have to go to the cinema for the big summer blockbuster this year! Nigerian musician Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu, now better known as Burna Boy to a growing fan base, throws himself into superhero pose for his fifth album. Coming from the ancient backdrops of his African origins, he lifts his foot larger than life to leave a deep mark in western pop culture - a "Black Panther" action hero who does not need a utopian fantasy realm Wakanda to propagate Afro-futurism or optimism , the presence of his real home is enough for him. His time, as this poster image wants to say, is now: With the sole of his boot he leaves the prints of a gorilla's head, a symbol of the pride and strength of his continent. You want to run right away and buy these boots. Merchandising please!

Burna Boy called himself "African Giant" on his very good and internationally acclaimed last album. Since then he has been involved in Beyoncé's Africa celebration "Black Is King" as well as in Lady Gaga's Lockdown benefit concert, and now he is about to become a globally valid African pop star of the modern age. For this, that is his claim, it is not enough to be a giant, you have to look twice as big, "twice as tall".

For this mission, the 29-year-old, who lived in London for a long time but went back to Lagos, again booked some stars of western pop music as guests: Coldplay singer Chris Martin, grime rapper Stormzy, hip-hop veterans Naughty By Nature, the Senegalese afropop icon Youssou N'Dour. "Twice As Tall" was co-produced by P.Diddy, who knows all about giants ("Godzilla" soundtrack anyone?). The rap mogul told the "New York Times" about Burna Boy that he considered him a revolutionary: "His conviction is serious", so he means business. Indeed, the "Black Lives Matter" zeitgeist couldn't be more ideal for an artist like Burna Boy. Like hardly any other contemporary pop musician, he combines the search of many black artists for their African roots. He knows both worlds, the origin as well as the diaspora - and, he says, wants to "build a bridge that brings every black person in the world together."

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Burna boy

Twice As Tall [Explicit]

Label: Bad Habit / On A Spaceship / Atlantic

Label: Bad Habit / On A Spaceship / Atlantic

approx. € 10.71

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He calls his recipe for this "Afro-Fusion", that is, the traditional Afrobeat grooves and funk rhythms that have recently become ubiquitous in hip-hop, expanded to include all sorts of other styles and styles of current pop music. However, the distinctively African of his music remains in the foreground at all times; this is not only limited to the lyrics that Ogulu sings in a slang of English, Pidgin and Yoruba that is difficult for non-Africans to understand, but also applies to the music, the trap -Rap, R&B or Reggaeton only quoted. The US import P.Diddy is ultimately just a sales-promoting feature, the real stars of this album are Burna himself, the numerous producers from the Nigerian Spaceship Collective, the creative circle around his own label, founded in 2015, including the one at the beginning of many songs Telz proclaimed "Funkula".

Andreas Borcholte's playlist

Photo: 

Christian O. Bruch / laif

They give "Twice As Tall" that carefree, summery flow that already inspired "African Giant", just twice as confident and optimized for the international charts. The previously published, anthem-like single "Wonderful" is the higher quality counterpart to the summer hit "Jersusalema", a "Graceland" without any cultural appropriation by western stars. "Alarm Clock" treats itself to an avant-garde jazz excursion in the intro, but immediately afterwards the positively positive pop flow dominates again, which makes the album a sometimes too slick update of "African Giant", even if at the end with " Monsters We Made "," Wetin Day Sup "and" Real Life "also shed light on the gloomy, problematic aspects of the everyday life of African youth. Maybe a little late.

However, it is difficult to protest against the demonstrative gentleness of the Afro light figure Burna Boy. "I'm way too big to be fucking with you," he smartly posits in "Way Too Big". "No Fit Vex" is a single message of peace, not to have beef with anyone and not want to start. Oluwaburna likes to call himself Burna Boy in his songs, which in Yoruba means something like: Burna, our God. And now with these cool gorilla boots. (8.0) Andreas Borcholte

The Killers - "Imploding The Mirage"

(Island / Universal, from August 21)

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When rock music wanted to sound like a clean-swept CBGB at the start of the new millennium, Brandon Flowers spread his arms and everyone came running: the old and the young, the Midwestern fathers who dreamed of Las Vegas at the supermarket checkout, the Popper, the rockers with camping chairs and the tenth graders from Zeulenroda, who from then on called themselves "Mrs. Brightside" on Myspace.

For almost two decades, Flowers and his band The Killers have been telling the joke about the largest stadium band on the planet, which was never a joke for the Disney-like singer from Nevada. In an effort to be Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Dave Gahan and Peter Gabriel all at the same time, Flowers created himself as a Mormon rock star Leviathan whose shoes he can no longer get filled in this life.

The appeal of the Killers lies in the constant scraping of their own claims, although this failure was never viewed maliciously, rather with the warmest feelings for their relentlessly hardworking chief entertainer. Because with all the hanging, choking and wanting, The Killers kept throwing songs that were what they really should be: timeless hits.

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The killers

Imploding the Mirage

Label: ICELAND

Label: ICELAND

approx. € 16.99

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After five albums it could have failed, but "Imploding The Mirage" rolls in and - contrary to what the title promises - explodes like ten fireworks over the prairie in front of the eyes of the whole world - without their guitarist Dave Keuning , who temporarily didn't feel like it anymore, the Killers are said to have cured some recordings before they threw everything in the bin and started over with a handful of well-known collaborators - including Jonathan Rado from Foxygen. We think of the ironic quotation marks with the last ones add two words in the previous sentence.

Because even "When The Dreams Run Dry" sounds like what happens when millennials no longer hear Totos "Africa" ​​ironically, in "Caution" Flowers tells the story of a "Featherweight Queen" in its slightly naive, always great American style Art sought storytelling - and it sounds as if Alphaville had hired Mark Knopfler as a singer. At the end, the real Lindsey Buckingham bludgeons a guitar solo over it.

Heard on the radio

On Wednesdays at 11 p.m. on the Hamburg web radio byteFM there is a taped mixtape with many songs from the records discussed and highlights from Andreas Borcholte's personal playlist.

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The thing is: if you spread your arms too long and too far, you will look like a priest at some point - and sound like it. After "My God" you feel like you've been run over by a parade wagon on which Flowers is filming in the company of an entire community choir. Feature guest Weyes Blood sings along as if she were being forced to play an enraptured disco queen with a hymn book held in front of her.

You can love or hate this spectacle, but in any case find it irrelevant if you are looking for the present in pop: Before The Killers make another album that is groundbreaking or even just contemporary, hell freezes over. That's how long the hearts and the guitars burn. The world is on fire too, but that doesn't impress the good shepherd Flowers: His arms are wide open and he comes in peace. (5.2) Julia Lorenz

Sneaks - Happy Birthday

(Merge / Cargo, from August 21st)

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Eva Moolchan could have been unsuccessful with her music 40 years ago. The artist from Baltimore uses the name Sneaks to dull her synthesizers, she produces stubbornly trotting beats and plays bass figures that look like stick figures. Everything sounds like it wasn’t finished on time, one always expects Moolchan to stall the song that is currently playing, and that’s exactly what happens after 120 seconds at the latest. She sings angry, sad and caustic songs in the hardly varied tone of the computer: Sneaks makes post-punk, the great, breadless art of the late seventies and early eighties.

"Happy Birthday" is the name of the fourth album of the project, and you have to imagine this title as delighted as "The Flowers Of Romance", the name of Public Image Ltd.'s third record. "Tell me, do you want to go out tonight?" Moolchan asks right at the beginning in a voice that speaks more resignation than promise: Still a party today? Breakbeat, ambient area and an almost unrecognizable Eurodance piano line up just as reluctantly as these repeatedly repeated words. Moolchan does not give an answer to the central question of "Do You Want To Go Out Tonight"; she does without further lines.

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Sneaks

happy Birthday

Label: MERGE RECORDS

Label: MERGE RECORDS

approx € 14.71

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The artist doesn't need many sentences because she chooses the right ones. Again and again, her songs sound about signs of the zodiac, musical creative processes, toxic environments and the cultivation of one's own vanity, as if Moolchan had picked up the corresponding texts at flat-share parties, art college openings or other strongholds of overconfidence. So is that sarcasm when she rants over doodle beats with dead eyes? Is it even cynicism or is it an expression of your righteous anger at an artist's life that is not always as fulfilling as you had hoped?

Eva Moolchan again refuses to answer. But you don't need a post-punk diploma to imagine that "Happy Birthday" is one of those albums that can withstand two or three hard truths at the same time. (7.6) Daniel Gerhardt

Bright Eyes - "Down In The Weeds, Where The World Once Was"

(Dead Oceans / Cargo, from August 21)

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At the turn of the millennium, people thought for the blink of an eye that Omaha was the new Seattle. At that time, a large number of bands from the city in Nebraska released mostly good albums via the Saddle Creek label, all of which lived in a similar sound space: on the left, from the pleasant folk of the Nick Drake School, on the right, from harsher sounds (sometimes electro, sometimes post- HC) limited. The relatively small group of people in this scene ensured numerous overlaps in everyday work; two central characters were Mike Mogis and Conor Oberst, who were also responsible for the sound of Bright Eyes. The band released several albums that quickly entered the indie canon, mainly due to Oberst, a slim teenager who always carried his tormented heart on his tongue and spoke other tormented hearts from the soul.

This "what has happened so far" is necessary to explain that the expectations of a new Bright Eyes album, the first since 2011, are quite high: Oberst, who has by no means been idle in recent years, has a brand name to use . On the other hand, this brand has always been one that made a wide variety of products; people like to remember the stubborn electronica sounds on "Digital Ash In A Digital Urn" (2005).

Above all, the Bright Eyes brand has always been one of the collaborations. The idea of ​​a band as an exclusive circle of people apparently seemed too boring to Oberst, along with his colleagues Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. So you hear a whole bunch of highly decorated colleagues on "Down In The Weeds ...": Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers plays the bass on some songs, on one of them Jenny Lee Lindberg from Warpaint does it. Jon Theodore (Queens Of The Stone Age, The Mars Volta) is on the drums, and whether the percussionist Kip Skitter is Zack de La Rocha from Rage Against The Machine is currently still being discussed in the relevant Reddit threads. There are also old friends like Macey Taylor and Andy LeMaster, as well as strings, wind instruments, choirs and, in "Persona Non Grata", bagpipes.

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Bright eyes

Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was

Label: DEAD OCEANS

Label: DEAD OCEANS

approx € 14.71

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The latter are deliciously irritating. The rest of the album is always solid, often excellent: "Dance And Sing" stumbles over its own feet with indulgence; Although the orchestra is playing, it always knows where to place itself, namely behind the singer Oberst, who leads a choir with a trembling half-roaring voice. Elsewhere, in "Mariana Trench" or "One And Done", broken beats and synths are blowing around the listener's nose, the former is also heartily burped by the brass section. The most beautiful song is the one that looks the smallest: In "Hot Car In The Sun", Oberst invites you to his summer. Almost like on the early albums, you are suddenly alone with him: "Made my bed and I brushed my teeth, didn't think about dying. Got up to face another day", he sings, and then compares himself to a dog who died in the sun-hot Chevrolet.

So the pain of the early days has remained. The tendency to gaze at the navel also. Several sentences jump out to us on this record, which as a young person would have smeared on one's forearms, strangers forearms or town hall walls, depending on courage and resistance: "All I can do is just dance on through" or: "There's no way to turn back the clock. It's going to run until it stops ".

One may perceive this love of the slogan as being consistent with the calendar; but it has always been the core of the supreme working principle. Just like their amusing break: In "Hot Car In The Sun", in addition to all the drama, the preparation of a celery soup is described. One likes to buy all that from him, just like one likes to listen to this agile, wonderfully orchestrated record. (6.7) Jochen Overbeck