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Rock band Arcade Fire
Photo:
Maria Jose Govea
Album of the week:
The harmless, basically warming little word "we" has meanwhile become a battlefield term.
After being used too timidly, for example in open letters to the Federal Chancellor, "we" can very quickly lead to withdrawing from the supposed solidarity of the collective into the distanced, individually thinking "I".
Of course, the "we" of those Monday strollers or so-called lateral thinkers, in whose ranks Nazis often run and agitate, is also questionable.
Being mean has become quite a complicated affair, no matter how much the longing for it in times of estrangement.
And that brings us to the new album by the Canadian band Arcade Fire, who titled their first release in five years »We«, i.e. that dubious »We«.
Only at the very end of the expansive seven tracks on the album, which are divided into movements rather than into songs, are there answers:
Race
and religion are only constructs, sings Régine Chassagne, alongside Win Butler the main songwriter of the large group, in »Unconditional II (Race and Religion)« and issues the slogan: »No time for division/ New vision/ United body and soul/ You and me – could be we«.
In another song text, Butler mentions the apparently severely disruptive “Gemini micro age”, in whose constellation the world has been since 2014 and will continue until 2029 – i.e. astrological turmoil.
In addition, scenes of the social and ecological apocalypse are conjured up, nothing less than the fall of the »American Empire«.
»We« is a feverish hippie dream, driven by doubts and fears and at times seemingly naïve, who wants to take its audience to the utopia of a better world with hymn-like songs.
The only question is:
Towards the end of the noughties, a long time ago, there was no doubt about it: With their albums »Funeral« and »Neon Bible«, the Canadians had created an enticing draft of indie rock, glittering and electric, but also solid and compellingly emotional.
»The Suburbs«, their previous masterpiece, combined the classic storytelling power of a Springsteen with the emo sound of the new millennium;
later they became more experimental, trying out an artificial, urban groove on "Reflector" and paying homage to Abba on "Everything Now".
The band still seemed to have been told, at the end of their ideas.
And that's why »We«, the unexpected and perhaps also unnecessary comeback, seems like a synthesis of all previous styles that a little desperately wants to tie in with that bygone era,
in which there was a real pop-cultural »we« around this band, because many people could agree on them.
Maybe they are right with this appeal to the indie rock nostalgia of the millennials, it's not for nothing that contemporaries like The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand or Muse are now playing big festivals again as headliners: Party like it's 2009.
Arcade Fire's renewed embrace is most likely to work if you don't pay too much attention to the lyrics, although, see above, that's another problem.
Butler and Chassagne, married since 2003, wrote most of the new pieces in the Corona lockdown, but some are said to be very old.
At least Butler comes out in »Age of Anxiety I« as a media skeptic who spends sleepless nights in front of the television and hates himself for it.
But the pills, that is, drugs, do nothing for him either in the new age of isolation and fear.
For him, Instagram and Co. are labyrinthine halls of mirrors: »It's a maze of mirrors/ It's a hologram of a ghost/ And we can't quite touch it/ Which is how it hurts us the most«.
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Arcade Fire
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Label: Columbia International (Sony Music)
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Musically, most of it is very nice if you like this kind of baroque opulence, which is always performed too euphorically.
John Lennon's "Imagine", Bowie's "Space Oddity", Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon", Radiohead's "Ok Computer" and a bit of Who rock opera - everything sounds good.
At the end, veteran star Peter Gabriel wheezes a little into »Race and Religion«, which already points to the 1980s with shimmering synthesizers.
Best of all is "Age of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole)" with its breathless panting and hissing futuristic Captain Future sound.
Whereby the anxious butler should of course rather be called Captain No Future, who can at least pour his general skepticism into cute, nihilistic verses: »Rabbit hole/ Plastic soul/ Down we go«.
»Lookout Kid« then welds the anxiety community together with a tender emo ballad on Sesame Street: »'Cause it's alright to be sad«, »Let me say it again: nobody's perfect«, »If you feel it, it's fine « – as long as you feel it, everything is fine.
The choir sings »Dupdupdupdup-di-doo« in the refrain.
In the end you can consider accepting the invitation to the Big Schunkel or simply canceling your Arcade Fire subscription, just as Butler asks his aging hipster entourage to do the ultimate dropout: »Unsubscribe.
Fuck Season Five.
Do you still need this sixth season of Arcade Fire?
We will see.
(7.0)
Listened briefly:
The man - »Top«
»Are you ready for the rebirth of a band that was dead until yesterday?« asks Maurice Summen on the unexpected second album of his Berlin bubble all-star band Der Mann.
"What you want is already there," the Staatsakt label boss and Türen singer, who is familiar with postmodernism, knows of course, which doesn't stop him, Ramin Bijan, Michael Mühlhaus and Johannes von Weizsäcker from returning to German discourse pop with funk and groove electrify like only Knarf Rellöm can.
As on Sumen's solo debut »PayPalPop«, it's about the everyday contradictions of late capitalist existence, state counterculture promotion in »Rock'n'Roll & Welfare State«, opinion Stalinism (»SUV«), anger management via »Aggrophone« and nostalgic "guitars from the crypt" echoing through the thin walls of the old building from the Boomer next door.
tiptop,
this comeback.
(8.0)
Ibeyi - »Spell 31«
There it is, the alternative summer hit in a better world: When the twin sisters Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz dance to Afro-Cuban rhythms in front of the mirror to Shakira in their new song »Sister 2 Sister«, there is no stopping them (even if the Band name, pronounced in the song, always sounds irritatingly like Ebay).
The third Ibeyi album is dedicated to the search for spirituality, holy water is sprayed and ritual texts such as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, to which the title refers, are burned at the altar: "Rewriting sacred scriptures/ So we could be together," the sisters sing together with Gambian-born UK rapper Pa Salieu in the central piece »Made of Gold«.
The evocative and generally enchanting electronic pop was magically produced with lots of neo-R&
B and Latin flair from XL Recordings boss Richard Russell.
It's a kind of magic.
(7.8)
Yung FSK18 – »18plus«
»Fuck, fuck, fuck/ lick, lick, lick/ dip, dip, dip«: Well, you could say that's maybe very close to twelve.
But you can understand that the rapper from Halle (Saale) no longer wanted to call herself Action Ahrens because of such pornographic text impulses (from »directly in love«) - funny, but a bit boring.
So Yung FSK 18, and it's really not an adult in this beautifully minimalist and outrageous sex and drill rap debut, on which even her everyday business woman »stress stress« becomes a self-empowerment anthem of a self-made OG (original gangster). .
The best Berlin rapper ("Your Ass", with Ikkimel) is just as little safe from mockingly whispered malicious rhyme as the common poser when the "Party Bitches" are having fun,
Want to rip off Rolex and AMG-Mercedes and confidently use their charms and skills.
feelings?
Bah.
»My relationship status: I just want to have fun«.
All she wants is, uh, to fuck.
fair enough
(7.5)
Mia Morgan - "Meat"
Of course, Mia Morgan now lives in Berlin.
In Kassel, where the 28-year-old singer comes from, she suffered from an eating disorder and depression, her extroverted make-up and clothing style, which can be admired in videos and on her Instagram account, was not understood in the Hessian province.
In the capital, she found musicians and colleagues such as Drangsal and Max Rieger (Dienerve, Alldies Demokratie), who also produced her EP »Gruftpop«.
So now the debut album "Fleisch", which Rieger equipped with edgy pompous, often a little too intrusive electro and emo pop rock.
More interesting than the music are the lyrics, which deal with anorexia (»meat«), body complexes (»more beautiful women«) or SM fetishes (»pet in the hotel«, »disgusting«).
Morgan has talent as a defiantly energetic, not emotionally bogged down songwriter,
has a powerful voice and the right themes for the zeitgeist.
It remains a mystery where their sometimes irritating penchant for, well, flat hits comes from.
Maybe a Kassel aftertaste.
(7.2)
