Listened - album of the week by The Screenshots: If that's a joke, it just keeps getting better

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Album of the week:

The Screenshots - "2 million sales with a simple idea"

Jan Böhmermann came up with it, people believed two years ago when the screenshots first attracted attention.

One smiled mildly at the hymn of praise in the "Zeit", which hailed the first mini-album of the trio from Krefeld in April 2018 as "the most beautiful and smartest, warmest and boldest, saddest and funniest German pop record of the spring".

April, April, yes yes.

Fooled.

The musicians remained unidentified, allegedly it was Susi Bumms, Kurt Prödel and Dax D!

Werner, who had previously made a name for themselves on Twitter with parodistic aphorisms about everyday life in neoliberalism.

They did appear in Böhmermann's "Neo Magazin Royale", but remained dark silhouettes.

Her music sounded suspiciously unironic: a rattling, rushing post-punk derivative with a large emo component, in which the singer in Rio-Reiser-Overdrive crowed: "I'll bang my head all day / satire" and postulated: "You just have to love satire".

It could only be satire.

A finger from the depths of the Internet to all punk rockers with their demeanor and their genuine despair at the circumstances;

a pose staged as a pop mystery to briefly surf the wave of excitement.

Yawn

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Christian O. Bruch / laif

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Or maybe the new, young, weaving doctors?

In the meantime, one might think, the screenshots have been disenchanted.

They moved from the anonymity of their Twitter avatars into reality, performed live as a band and shown themselves in video clips.

So they have submitted to the principle of authenticity, which is still valid in their genre of handmade music.

And now they are releasing their first real album.

Wait a minute, wasn't the gag over yet?

Let's put it this way: if the screenshots are a joke, it just keeps getting better.

And more snappy: "We used to be wild and uncomfortable / Today it's about love and trust / The new neighbors are just like us / And that's why we stay here forever", it rages in "We love each other and build a house" to roar Guitars about the neophyte adaptation addiction in standardized new building districts.

"Träume" celebrates the "Christian Lindner Swag" in an over-the-top ode to the pressure to perform and life, which oozes caustic malice.

"The world is not going to end yet, it is just getting hornier", aims at the conscience of all those who believe that they can numb hopelessness with hedonism.

In the end, a bloodcurdling scream bursts the bubble of shameless self-marketing and forced euphoria: "Tell me, are you afraid," asks the singer, and the answer, a death-metallic roaring "YESAAAA!", Has the effect of an echo from a Japanese horror film the kind that won't let you sleep at night.

"Born to run", Springsteen's rock'n'roll sigh of the economic prison of the individual, also occurs here, it becomes an expression of the driven nature of the millennials generation: Make something of yourself, be the boss, earn millions, be creative ,

... to the point of total exhaustion.

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The screenshots

2 million sales with a simple idea

Label: Musikbetrieb ROCK (membrane)

Label: Musikbetrieb ROCK (membrane)

approx. € 13.99

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16.10.2020 4.15 p.m.

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And suddenly the supposedly flickering screenshots with their fun punk sit in the middle of the steel bath - very close to the seething time diagnosis of the band Die Nerven, which they recently called inspiration in an interview. 

The indie pop music that plays with it, partly Gang of Four, partly Dinosaur Jr., partly Weezer, serves as an energy boost so as not to sink into the abyss of melancholy and depression.

He already gaped on the debut EP "A strong team", in the leaden shards of "Germany".

Here the self-proclaimed "Sh00ters" tie in with "Greetings to all" again.

The now often loveless greeting is addressed to "the fears", "the money", "the mom", but also to "the gun under my bed".

No more fun.

Please take a screenshot of it for me.

(7.9)

Briefly listened to:

Holy Motors - "Horse"

Holy Motors from Estonia also ride hard on the cliché on their second album, but at the latest when Eliann Tulve sighs laconically "just another endless night" in the second song, you are at the feet of this band, their melancholy and their singer.

Tulve sounds like Hope Sandoval once did with Mazzy Star, the music for it could be called Shoegaze Americana.

For cowboy junkies.

(8.2)

Sorry3000 - "Why Overthinking Destroys You"

They obviously heard a lot of Lassie Singers and Schnipo Schranke, but Sorry3000 from Halle, the supposedly more interesting Leipzig, claim their own genre: Real-Pop.

Singer Stefanie Heartmann is courageously unvarnished in videos, the songs are about Bontempi organ and Billo beats about nasal spray addiction and fitness fatigue.

Not pretty, but great.

(7.5)

Lous and the Yakuza - "Gore"

Marie-Pierra Kakoma, 24, was born in Congo, fled to Belgium as a child, then returned to Africa, experienced poverty, racism and suffering.

The French sung, world rhythmic R&B of her elegant and intense debut as Lous and the Yakuza is fed by anger and sadness - and the claim to become one of the great pop artists of the decade.

Could work.

(7.9)

Kevin Morby - "Sundowner"

US songwriter Kevin Morby had to recover from the critical praise and the success of his last two albums - and fled from California to his hometown Kansas City.

In the icy winter of the Midwest he began an intimate relationship with an old Tascam four-track device - and composed this rural, contemplative quarantine album.

Helps against cabin fever.

(7.2)