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Scrap limit: Gentle guitar pop and political statements
Photo: Chantal Weber
A queer band will release a new album in 2023.
Actually, that's no longer worth reporting, as the success of international pop stars like Harry Styles, Cardi B or the rock band Maneskin proves that songs about sexual equality, self-determination and the dissolution of gender roles have arrived in the mainstream.
The catchphrase queer questions gender norms and is a political attribution whose impact on young audiences has also been recognized by the music industry.
Many bands today already start their career with the label queer.
It is not always immediately clear in individual cases whether queer themes in music are expressed out of real political conviction or whether they are adapted to a woke-queer zeitgeist.
On their tenth album »Das Universum ist nicht binary«, the Hamburg band Schrott border also serves a woke-queer zeitgeist, but their politicization is based on an authentic story: that of the personal change of the singer Saskia Lavaux.
In the beginning, Schrott border was still a wild teenage punk band from the small town of Peine in Lower Saxony, but the band quickly developed into an indie rock band, which in the 2000s was stylistically located somewhere between »Tomte« and »Kettcar«.
Indie hits like »Binoculars« or »Belladonna« emerged.
Melancholic rock music for young people wearing studded belts, at a time when Vans sneakers were still decorated with red sharpie markers and the emo subculture still existed.
The band also continued to develop from this phase, there was now more pop than punk, the lyrics became more poetic, simply better.
Nevertheless, the band broke up after internal problems in 2010.
They reunited seven years later.
And in a literally new guise.
Singer Saskia Lavaux came out as trans during the band break.
The change in the singer changed the content of the lyrics.
Now it was no longer just about entertaining.
Since reuniting in 2017, the band has wanted to close a queer gap in the German-speaking music landscape.
Singer Lavaux sees an urgent need to catch up and recently said in an interview.
"I'm fed up with hearing only hetero-normative, bisexual love songs."
Between »Boomer Tears« and »Happyland«
Consequently, the singer doesn't do things by halves on the album's title track and sets the route with the lines »Imagine, we wake up and it would be the most beautiful morning / because patriarchy would have died«.
On »The Universe Is Not Binary«, Schrott border deal with current debates, and in »Boomer Tears« address a yesterday's generation that is closed to current debates about climate protection.
("They don't know any limits/ No speed limits And always just that one old song/On their way to the retired republic.")
The song "Happyland," which was created with rapper Finna, is about self-expression on social networks, about something the band itself describes as toxic positivity.
»I only see good vibes only in the stories/ good vibes only/ without worries/ in Happyland«.
But instead of warning, the group smiles at those who have completely surrendered to the Instagram algorithm.
Musically, however, the former suburban punks don't reinvent themselves on their new album.
Gentle guitar pop envelops the band's political statements, instead of the compositions, the lyrics are in the foreground.
In the end, there remains the realization that the universe is not binary - and the world in which we live is not fair.
But at least the latter can perhaps be changed.
Editor's note: One member of the band works in the SPIEGEL secretariat.