Wanda's new album: Farewell greeting from a "dear friend"

Created: 09/27/2022, 16:21

By: Jörg Heinrich

With his Wanda colleagues: Christian Hummer (centre) with (from left) Lukas Hasitschka, Manuel Christoph Poppe, Reinhold Weber and Michael Marco Fitzthum.

The Austrian band was recorded in 2015. © Henrik Josef Boerger/dpa

"Wanda", the new album by the Viennese band Wanda, will be released on Friday.

After the death of their keyboardist Christian Hummer, the group canceled all dates.

The musician was only 32 years old.

Fans of the legendary party-loving Viennese rock band Wanda had been looking forward to Friday, September 30, 2022 for weeks.

Finally the new album with the simple title "Wanda" (Universal).

Finally new songs between liquor, excess and melancholy.

Finally music again from the five guys in leather jackets who made “Bologna” and “Tante Ceccarelli” a pop phenomenon in 2014.

But now only the melancholy and the sadness remain.

On Monday, September 26, 2022, Wanda had to announce that their keyboardist and founding member Christian Hummer died at the age of 32 after a long and serious illness.

The album should be released anyway, as a farewell to the "dear friend".

The band has canceled all other activities this week, including a concert to accompany the release at the Berlin Badehaus.

Wanda founding member Christian Hummer was only 32 years old

Wanda had obviously had to adjust to this loss for a long time.

The Austrian music journalist Reiner Reitsamer, who knew Hummer well, reports in a touching obituary in the "Musikexpress" about the musician's heart surgery in 2020 and about a last encounter: "At the beginning of this year I heard his voice on Mariahilfer Strasse in Vienna .

At first I couldn't place the friendly 'Hello'.

Then his eyes met mine.

Those steel blue eyes.

And I got a fright.

That was Christian.

I almost didn't recognize him.

He had become terribly thin.”

The album "Wanda" sounds like a memory of Christian Hummer

Christian Hummer's keyboards shaped the original Wanda sound from the first song on the first record.

Without him there would be no Amore in Bologna, no Aunt Ceccarelli and no later hits like the rousing "Gib mir alles".

Hummer was no longer present at the concerts of the past few months and on the photos for the new album.

And the record sounds different now, like a last memory of the deceased, almost like David Bowie's requiem "Blackstar", which he staged in 2015/16 for his own farewell.

Michael Marco Fitzthum sings about "places we've been to".

The most recent single is perhaps not accidentally titled "We are lost".

In the melancholic "Va bene" it says: "One becomes more anxious, one becomes lonelier, one becomes more cruel, one becomes more childish and forgetful.

You become more ridiculous and vulnerable.

And everything has to go on anyway.” In the last song of the album, which is no longer so wild and no longer so excessive, Wanda celebrate themselves once again as a “gang” that doesn’t separate anything, at most death: “Nix, wos ma tuan, wird je become a legend.

We're glad when we die at the end.

We're a gang, and we're together.” The record marks a dignified farewell for Christian Hummer, which is well worth listening to.

It makes you happy, it makes you sad.

And above all she wants to

to hear the outstanding and unfortunately only two songs that Hummer released with his second band Loeweloewe.

"Louder than the voice in my head" and his last song, the irresistible catchy tune "Stop Lift Stop", sound more electronic, more adventurous and braver than Wanda's last records.

Maybe that would have been the sound of the future for the bullies from Vienna.

That will no longer happen.

But it still has to go on, somehow.

That will no longer happen.

But it still has to go on, somehow.

This will no longer happen.

But it still has to go on, somehow.