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Musician Stella Sommer
Photo:
Gloria Endres de Oliveira
Album of the week:
Stella Sommer – »Silence Wore a Silver Coat«
Oh, that again?
Yes!
Regular readers of this section are probably all too familiar with the hymns of praise that have already been written here about the singer and songwriter Stella Sommer from Schleswig-Holstein.
Was it any use?
Sommer's fame has meanwhile spread beyond the local scene, for example to England, also thanks to English-language singing.
But until now it is considered a specialist topic.
Her style of presentation, which often seemed brittle and severe in the past, once established as the frontwoman of the ironically titled band Die Heiterkeit, was probably too deterrent for the pop market.
A singer who demonstratively refuses to be sweet and cute and prefers to deal with sourness in her lyrics rather than sweetness is actually great per se.
Maybe Sommer was in tune with the zeitgeist with the deep explorations of her
mental health
and way ahead of the autonomy of their songwriting.
And now that he's finally caught up with her, she just does everything differently: With her third solo album »Silence Wore a Silver Coat«, the ice queen of the German indie scene, who now lives in Berlin, lets the rough ridges and edges of her music go even further melt away than last on the already excellent »Northern Dancer«.
Some of the songs on the new double album, there are a total of 24 new pieces, were created in the apparently very productive session for the predecessor.
For the first time, however, the musician and songwriter produced herself instead of getting studio help from renowned indie sound experts like Moses Schneider or Max Rieger, as she used to do in the past.
The result: Sommer's music becomes even warmer and more cuddly.
The very first song, "A Single Thunder in November" astounds with homely "Jolene" guitar harmony and Lee Hazlewood comfort.
Sommer's voice, previously often compared to deep-toned, declamating role models like Nico, dares to go further and further into the high register, appears less cold, but instead devoted and melodious.
It is a new self-confidence that speaks from the economical production, which focuses on voice and moods.
This also includes the fact that Sommer does not make her new work, which she herself calls "Monolith", available for streaming.
The singles alone can be heard on Apple Music or Spotify.
The jangling cold of Velvet Underground's »All Tomorrow's Parties«, perhaps the eternal blueprint of Stella Sommer's music, still often resonates through the solemn and anthemic.
But the iciness and the frozenness gives way more and more to an unbelievably soft melt.
Piano and organ, quiet drums and restrained guitars are often shaped and caressed by electronic glare and chorales, which seem like a sphere of softly insulating, fleetingly blown powder snow.
It's as if spring suddenly broke out during Sommer's long, autumnal rides or walks along the North Sea, as in "Winter Queen (in Sommer)" - and the song's protagonist, inspired, strips off her shiny silver Barbour jacket and breathes in the warm air deeply .
When exhaling, however, it can still get chilly ("Frozen Air").
Many of their new songs feel like stepping out of a depression, one at a time.
Gradually, but more and more steadily, the ice around the key to her heart melts, a motif that appears in several songs.
"I was selling disappointment and frustration as a poisoned sweet," she sings in one go: a gesture of humility towards ex-lovers who have bitten their teeth at their gloom and aloofness.
After all, once in full gloomy mode, she can spread cool fog even in sunny California ("London Fog in LA").
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Stella Summer
Silence Wore a Silver Coat
Label: Buback / Indigo
Label: Buback / Indigo
approx. €14.99
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25.11.2022 4 p.m
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But in her gloom there is also goodness and security: »In my darkness there's a spare room for you/ There's a toothbrush for you, it's right where you left it, it's as good as new«, she sings in »In My Darkness« , along with »Run Towards The Wasteland« one of several approaches by Sommer to something like pop songs that one could now imagine (and wish for) on the radio.
With »A Special Kind of Lostness«, with hints of house piano chords and nineties synths reminiscent of Enigma - she might be overdoing it a bit.
And when she suddenly lets her voice run free in "Under the Weeping Mulberry Tree", you are shocked for a moment.
Sommer's songs are still characterized by great sadness and embrace loneliness, which ultimately also corresponds to her position in German indie pop: "Emptiness follows wherever we go," it says at one point.
The emptiness and cold threatens and remains like an omnipresent shadow.
"A sadness that I used to know," she sings in the last song of this album, masterfully balanced between solipsism and openness, which seems so compellingly intimate and personal - and yet also has a lot to tell about the threshold state of the political and social mood.
(9.6)
Intercepted is on winter break! As usual, you can read a special edition here in December about the best and most important albums of the year. In January we will continue with new releases.