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Musician Charlotte Brandi
Photo:
Annika Weertz
Album of the week:
Charlotte Brandi - »To the Nightmare«
Charlotte Brandi immediately takes the ink out of the fountain pen of male critics: »What I created/ Doesn't interest you/ Another loud person/ With a striking face/ Your antipathy amazed me for a long time/ Now everything makes sense/ You're just scared vor Frauen«, she sings with a whole female choir in the brilliant a cappella piece »Der Ekel« at the beginning of her new album.
So »An den Nightmare« is an almost untouchable pop album, because most music critics in Germany are still men - and they find music by self-confident women potentially intimidating, Brandi seems to know from experience: if you don't celebrate their music, has already lost.
Clever!
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Charlotte Brandy
To the nightmare
Label: Listenrecords (Broken Silence)
Label: Listenrecords (Broken Silence)
approx. €16.99
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02/10/2023 18:11
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The Berlin songwriter recorded and produced her second album entirely without male participation.
She drew two conclusions from this, she says in interviews: there was not, as is usual, an apparently disturbing "erotic tension" in the studio - and, even more important: nobody questioned her authority as the boss of her art: "I have during didn't feel like a little girl for the first time in the making of the album.«
What shouldn't be overlooked in view of so much unfortunately necessary gender politics: the musician, who used to write in English, has also taken control of her mother tongue and, after an EP last year, now formulates album-length indie pop hits sung with bell-like clarity in a dreamy, playful sixties sound.
In the subsequent, but also self-reflective closing track "Der Ekel II", the harmony of "Scarborough Fair" is almost unabashedly reminiscent, other songs contain gentle Caribbean or African rhythms - a contemplative retro flow.
But its themes are necessarily contemporary.
The lyrics are about the utopia of female autonomy (»Woman«), touring escapism in the recession (»Money«) or men who have ends »like a map that does not use areas« (»The Last Bridge«). .
Brandi, born in Rhineland in 1985, was once a member of the electropop duo Me and My Drummer, and she also composed theater music from an early age.
In the sweet melodies, with which she wants to escape the nightmarish world of men, she uses dramaturgically skillful dissonances and sung things to counteract any cliché of cuteness.
The pop world is far from harmonious and beautiful just because women sometimes make music without guys.
But maybe a little bit better.
(7.8)
Listened briefly:
Kelela - "raven"
For the fact that she describes herself as a rather intellectual person, the US musician Kelela Mizanekristos very often manages to create perhaps the most soulful electronic dance music that you can imagine alongside the genre-related Brit FKA Twigs.
She took five years to release the follow-up to her acclaimed debut »Take Me Apart«.
With the mixtape »Cut 4 Me« from 2013, she was considered to be one of the greatest talents in that experimental border area between soul, R&B and sophisticated club music, alongside artists like Solange.
»Raven« is her most concentrated work to date: an immersive album full of water metaphors that plunge the listener deep into an Afrofuturistic world of self-healing: wounds inflicted by racism, sexism and marginalization,
are examined, scrubbed and embalmed in all painful layers as well as intimate, very personal heartbreak experiences.
In many ways, the songs on "Raven" are a sonic translation of the famous key oceanic scene in the movie "Moonlight": floating for a rare sense of freedom.
Kelela, sometimes minimalist, reduced only to her voice, sometimes driven by concise, danceable, but never aggressive or too cleverly overwhelming beat constructions, reflects the emotional chaos between an old and a new love in all its facets - from the adrenaline-pumping excitement of a »Missed Call' to the anguished deep house of 'Bruises'.
"Washed Away", "Sorbet" and "Divorce" are highlights of a precise music aimed at emotional immersion, but not at sensory overload.
At the end of her emotional bath, the eponymous raven rises, newly born and freed into the world, able to cast off hindering attachments and chains: She herself is sufficient for love, sings the protagonist in the tender and chirping »Enough For Love«, which ends in the soothing lapping of the sea .
Kelela has all the threads of her rhythm and rave art firmly in her hands, anyone who wants to surf her wave goes swimming: "I'm holding on so tight / But you can't free-ride for longer," she sings .
Frank Ocean's big wise sister.
Kelela has all the threads of her rhythm and rave art firmly in hand, anyone who wants to surf her wave goes swimming: "I'm holding on so tight / But you can't free-ride for longer," she sings .
Frank Ocean's big wise sister.
Kelela has all the threads of her rhythm and rave art firmly in her hands, anyone who wants to surf her wave goes swimming: "I'm holding on so tight / But you can't free-ride for longer," she sings .
Frank Ocean's big wise sister.
(8.8)
Kliffs - "After The Flattery"
But now it's good with the post-pandemic albums that are available.
Yes, but one thing is still possible: »After The Flattery«, which you could read as »After Flattery«, but also as »After Flattery«, hoa, is the second album by Canadian duo Mark Bérubé and Kristina Koropecki under the name Cliffs.
The two have now been living in Berlin for years, where the album was also produced by state act musician Daniel Freitag - as playful, sometimes dreamy, gently melancholic folk pop with acoustic guitar, rustic percussion ideas, cello and clarinet.
That sometimes sounds like a plucked-hopped indie follow-up to Gotye's hit "Somebody That I Used To Know" ("Running"), leans harmonically on Beatles or Jeff Buckley,
sighs towards Eastern Europe (»Alibi«) or becomes very brittle and transparent as in the touching loser ballads »Jackpot« or »Black Sheep«.
Often carried by the duo's polyphonic singing, a more urban, Kreuzberg, not Texas-inspired version of Timbuk 3, if anyone else knows it.
All songs are emphatic letters addressed to a wide variety of pandemic characters, the employer as well as the doomsday oath or the sister who has not been seen for too long.
So flattering and beautifully made you'll be blown away.
the employer as well as the doomsday oath or the sister you haven't seen for too long.
So flattering and beautifully made you'll be blown away.
the employer as well as the doomsday oath or the sister you haven't seen for too long.
So flattering and beautifully made you'll be blown away.
(7.3)
Yo La Tengo - »This Stupid World«
In a world that's unfortunately never immune to rampant stupidity, Yo La Tengo have come a long way without major compromises or concessions: celebrating their 40th anniversary next year, they've survived the avant-hardcore bands of the 80's just as much as the alternative - and noise colleagues of the nineties.
Most recently, they even courageously put the guitars and their traditional sound in the corner in order – like Low – to dissolve the idea of rock music critical of the zeitgeist in ambient sounds.
Yo La Tengo, recurrently just married couple Ira Kaplan (guitar, vocals) and Georgia Hubley (drums, vocals), were never as significant or cool as Sonic Youth, Pavement and other relatives, maybe it was because
that from their home town of Hoboken in New Jersey they had a somewhat distanced view of the hype and scene metropolis New York.
»Sinatra Drive Breakdown«, the first track on »This Stupid World«, also tells of a now heavily gentrified street there, Frank-Sinatra-Drive, which chugs along for seven krautrocking minutes: Of course, they and the damn rest of humanity stay put - emotionally and in every respect – »until we all break down«.
Cleansing, crystal-clear folk and country ballads like “Aselestine”, named after a nasal spray that is common in the USA, can be found between spinning top grooves fogged with guitar noise like “Brain Caper”.
The most personable and honest sitcom indie rock has to offer.
Even in the now 17th season, there is still a ray of hope in the dark nonsense derangement.
(8.0)
Power Plush - »Coping Fantasies«
The pop scene in Chemnitz in Saxony does not only consist of Kraftklub and their sibling band Blond, contrary to blase urban opinions.
Well, but Power Plush also have something to do with this power cell, their debut album appears as the first signing on the label Beton Klunker Tonträger, which the Blond-Frauen founded.
"Coping Fantasies" contains glitzy, gliding power-pop like "Nothing Left To Lose" from the brink of the ever-threatening nervous breakdown in the modern overwhelmed world.
The musical role models can be found in existentialist British indie pop from the Smiths to Belle and Sebastian with a penchant for showgazing.
But the three font women Anja, Maria and Svenja (a Nino also plays along) can also get angry when the guys get intrusive again:
"Leave Me Alone" is a powerful rejection of nocturnal grabbers and harassers, "Girl, He Toxic" demands with funky guitars from members of the same sex to leave the next stupid guy on his "toxic ass".
»Make me happy, make me sad/ Can't remember what comes next«, it says at one point in romantic deep frustration to sad heavy chorus guitars.
Everything is a bit retro, but Chemnitz is coming!
(7.0)