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Cover by Culk: "Bad face to bad game"
Album of the week:
Culk - "Scatter On Yourselves"
You don't know what kind of music opponent Jan Weiler hears, but one thing is clear: Culk's second album, which is dark and bright at the same time, shouldn't really appeal to him.
The band from Vienna plays exactly the music that men around 50 like Weiler (and I) actually like best: existentialist post-punk that struggles with the self, the pain and the world;
Melancholy, pressed deep into the painful pillow by billowing guitars and grumbling bass.
Splendid.
No, not.
But… yes, what is the female equivalent of glory?
Femininity?
Do you notice yourself, or that there is a certain hierarchical gradient?
Andreas Borcholte's playlist
Photo:
Christian O. Bruch / laif
Culk: Years later
Kiiara feat.
DeathByRomy & PVRIS: Numb
Saweetie: Tap in
Headie One: Breathing
Dizzee Rascal & Chip: LLLL (Love Life Live Large)
Junglepussy: Main Attraction
May: Islands And Waves
Kylie Minogue: Magic
Bartees Strange: Mustang
Metz: Hail Taxi
Go to Spotify playlist Right arrow Go to Apple Music playlist Right arrow
This is exactly where the Culk singer Sophie Löw comes in in her song "Dichterin": "I'm not a poet / But I write poems", she sings plaintively, but also annoyed: "You have no words for me / And you have for me / lead me far away from influence and power ", it goes on to the address of men who, because of their linguistic privilege, do not need to worry about who disappears behind their generic masculine. But:" Forget mine ", whispers Löw at the end of her song.
That sounds less romantic than challenging.
The power relationship between the sexes, the tension between self-humiliation and self-empowerment, which is also full of pleasure, was already a topic on Culk's debut album last year, addressed in the intoxicating "Desire / Shame".
With the help of the Austrian producer Wolfgang Möstl (Nino from Vienna, Voodoo Jürgens) the band has now cleaned up and clarified their sound.
You could even dance to all the glittering guitars that slide through the nightly music.
Löw's lethargic sounding but sublime angry chants grab the listener by the throat all the more immediately: "Nacht" hurries nervously through the uncertainty of moving through the streets as a woman: "Nobody who watches over us / Only women everywhere, only women, only women".
All that remains is to make a "bad face for a bad game" or "show an attitude to hold onto".
Like in "Years Later", a sad song about the slowness with which relationships change: "You break up again years later", Loew sings - and then forces the statute "Know norms so as not to burn up through ignorance" with a miraculous Magic in one verse.
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Culk
Scatter over you
Label: Siluh Records / Cargo
Release date: 10/9/2020
Label: Siluh Records / Cargo
Release date: 10/9/2020
approx € 13.59
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09.10.2020 3.43 p.m.
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The subject of these songs lets things happen to them, while "nothing can happen" to the other, the male counterpart, whether during sex or at work or in public spaces.
Like her British colleague Nadine Shah, Löw gains a poetic power and energy from this decidedly female frustration of constant marginalization that is rare in German-speaking pop and rock.
It is channeled and musically translated by Löw's three male bandmates.
This album condenses more and more until the man stands in the "ruins" of his power at the end: "Who you used to be / Hasn't counted for a long time".
"Bronzeguss" then opens up an unexpected, musically relaxed glimmer of hope: "Don't tell me who I am and I'll stay with you," offers Loew.
But will their conditions, perhaps at some point, also be respected?
No wonder that melancholy is feminine.
(8.5)
Briefly listened to:
Future Islands - "As Long As You Are"
Samuel T. Herring, singer of Future Islands, likes to reinforce the sonorous passion of his lecture with the ball of fist and chest pounding.
A talk show appearance made the band from Baltimore world famous in 2014.
Herring's chants - about love and Weltschmerz - are also gripping on the new album.
It's just a shame that the sticky, over-the-top synth pop around it is so annoying.
(6.0)
Dizzee Rascal - "E3 AF"
Ok, a quick deciphering aid: E3 is the Bow district in east London, where the garden wholesale market with the charming name "Growing Concerns" is located.
AF?
Sure: "as fuck".
But it also stands for the Afro roots of grime pioneer Dizzee Rascal, who comes from E3 and has been producing at home after several pop-rap albums in the USA: Earthy half an hour.
(7.0)
Bartees Strange - "Live Forever"
Oops, the Kings of Leon still exist?
One might think, when one hears "Mustang" and "Boomer", the best, wildly galloping songs on the debut of Bartees Strange: Arena-suitable indie rock then vigorously goes into spin with soul and hip-hop.
The highlight: The musician from DC is black and congenially brings home the rock genre that has only been loaned to Whitey.
(8.0)
Travis - "10 Songs"
The Scottish band around singer (and part-time Berliner) Fran Healy has such a high cuddle factor that it has been whispered for weeks that "10 Songs" could be the best Travis album in a long time.
It's not.
Already at the second tame chirping song you doze off - despite guest singing by the eternally exciting Susanna Hoffs.
You have to do it first.
Favorite boring.
(3.0)