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Album of the week:
The doctors - "Hell"
How do you imagine hell for a band like Die Ärzte?
When nothing is more suitable for provocation.
When the release of a new album heavily overloaded with 18 songs is celebrated like a state ceremony.
When you find that everyone can agree on you.
Because somewhere between the early eighties and today, between "Claudia has a shepherd dog", "Sibling love", "Westerland" and "cry for love", every boomer will find a blissful, formative memory of doctors.
Even the once divisive schoolyard question "Doctors or pants?"
has long since settled - if in doubt, the audience, aged with both bands, roars with both, nice with a beer.
Waiting for the old hits.
Hell, hell, hell.
"Alles ist Punk" was the programmatic chorus of the first single, with which Farin Urlaub, 56, Bela B, 57, and Rod González, 52, spoke up again after an eight-year break.
But when everything is punk in postmodern, ironic times, wearing a fur coat just like a holiday home, small family and CDU vote, and guitarists are just bores, as in the humorous song "Why does nobody talk about guitarists?", Then what is punk?
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The doctors
HELL (hardcover book)
Label: Hot Action Records (Die Ärzte) (Universal Music)
Label: Hot Action Records (Die Ärzte) (Universal Music)
approx € 18.51
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23.10.2020 5.44 p.m.
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Maybe to do everything as always, regardless of losses: punk rock with bass, drums, lots of loud guitar riffs.
"Hell" is an album that is a lot of fun over a large part of its really long track.
Nostalgic people get a velvety "Westerland" update with "The Last Song of Summer", but are then dragged over the pebbles of life by the first sentimental, then bitter photo album biography "Ich, am Strand".
The doctors are best when they make such sadistic U-turns within a song, as in the "Oi!"
roaring bully parade "All on glasses".
Or when in the hymn to idleness, "Attention: Bielefeld", the title tries to be the most boring joke of old West Germany, but suddenly, with the word "Aleppo", the global crisis awareness finds its way into the text.
Andreas Borcholte's playlist
Photo:
Christian O. Bruch / laif
Girlwoman: Tick Tack Trauma
Ariana Grande: Positions
Faangs: Huh
Junglepussy feat.
Ian Isiah: Out My Window
Ela Minus: Dominique
Smerz: I Don't Talk About That Much
Scooter: FCK 2020
The doctors: One beer
Jeff Tweedy: Natural Disaster
Gorillaz feat.
Beck: The Valley of the Pagans
Go to Spotify playlist Right arrow Go to Apple Music playlist Right arrow
Die Ärzte, above all lyricist Farin Urlaub, know how to inspire with their nod, end and pair rhymes, which they have learned from Heinz Erhardt and Fips Asmussen, in "True Romance" for example, the singular radio hit on the album, or when they play "Meer" Force "rush hour traffic" and "helicopter sea".
Bela B complements elementary school Germanism with beautiful surrealisms such as "Once a beer", in which he imagines himself gargling as barley juice through his own throat.
So far, so drunk.
Doctors in politics don't show quite as much grip, that's sobering.
Perhaps it is true what Farin Urlaub said in a recent interview that the positioning of the band was finished with the "asshole" announcement of "cry for love" - and now it is only about the "twist" of the individual songs.
The punch line as an end in itself.
That seems strangely twisted in "Liebe gegen Rechts" when the protagonist's girlfriend is right-wing extremist, then criminal, then transgender from one verse to the other - and the doctors insinuate that everything is equally abnormal and can supposedly be cured with a lot of love .
Finally, in "Woodburger", an unnecessary encore at the end, the band first rumbles against the AfD and then falls into the fantasy of joining the party in order to confront them with their fear of homosexuality.
It is then groaned lusciously "gay" to pompous funk grooves.
Perhaps in the sweat of this apparently funny jam session (at the end there is happily cackling), the band simply overlooked the fact that they are getting themselves into the maze of reactionary narratives.
Or maybe they wanted to provoke just as wet and unreflective as they used to be - as politically incorrect as "The Little Rascals" or "Fathers of Clothes", the older ones will remember.
But if this is punk now, then it will be more complicated than The Doctors ever were.
(5.0)
Briefly listened to:
Gorillaz - "Song Machine: Season One: Strange Timez"
It's almost a shame that this innovative pop venture by the Gorillaz is now being released as a disgraceful album: Most of the genre-breaking tracks have appeared like series episodes over the last few months, each with a guest star: Robert Smith, Slowthai, Elton John, now including Beck.
The individual parts looked larger than the total, but it's always good for biting.
(7.5)
Ela Minus - "Acts of Rebellion"
In the spirit of Marie Davidson's "Working Class Woman", columnist Ela Minus has empowered the techno means of production: Everything on the electrifying debut of the former hardcore drummer is analog and self-created.
This viscerality can be felt in the gripping feminism manifesto "Megapunk", but also in more esoteric instrumentals.
Ella vencerá!
(8.0)
Jeff Tweedy - "Love is the King"
Lonely people in a rough nature: The cover of Wilco singer Jeff Tweedy's third solo record is an indication that by the end of the year you will only need two lockdown albums - Taylor Swift's "Folklore" and this one.
One cries at the ode to wife Susie, one laughs at "Natural Disaster", one hears warm country and family house music.
Feels like home.
(8.5)
Junglepussy - "JP4"
Shayna McHayle aka Junglepussy should finally get the recognition it deserves from a larger part of the hip-hop scene.
On her fourth album, the rapper from Brooklyn not only proves that she can outdo "WAP" when it comes to sex talk ("Stamina"), she is also musically confident with borrowings from jazz, trip-hop and indie rock.
On the best way to "Main Attraction".
(7.8)
You can read our review of Bruce Springsteen's new album, "Letter to You", here.
