There are people who try drugs once in their lives and end up in a parallel universe for a long time. And there are people like Peter Doherty: Exactly the other way around, he took his first real drug break in 20 years the summer before last and suddenly got to know the world from a different side. With a clear head he met the French musician Frederic Lo, the two began writing songs together, Lo the music, Doherty the lyrics. This is how the enchanting album “The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime” (Straps Originals) was born in a lonely old house in France.
Doherty sings tender lines full of enraptured melancholy, the music breathes the spirit of the 1960s, there’s a lot of chanson blowing through it, it even goes in the direction of music theater, violins, a few melancholy wind instruments in the background. In the restrained orchestral “The Ballad Of …” Neil Hannon (divine comedy) and Rufus Wainwright feel comfortable. Then again Bänkelsänger-Pop with acoustic guitar, très charming especially the spring song “Keeping Me On File”. And the detoxified Doherty sounds centered and focused like never before. What a beautiful album, what a beautiful surprise.
All Them Witches is one of those bands whose music really needs to be played live in stuffy basement clubs where it’s too cramped, too dark and above all too loud. The quartet from Nashville plays what is often called “Stoner Rock”, a somewhat stupid category, but please, for the sake of simplicity, stoner rock: a lot Black Sabbath in it, a lot of e-guitar thunderstorms, riffs that turn into endless thrashing, everything sounds extremely long-haired, dark and great. The band actually wanted to give many concerts in recent years, but they all fell victim to the pandemic – so there was only one studio session, but at least it was broadcast live on the Internet. The recording is now available as an album, “Live On The Internet” (V2), and despite the circumstances, it’s pretty powerful. If you open up these songs really loudly at home and dim the lights and go around in circles for a while, then … well, you can at least almost imagine what it might be like again at some point, such a really booming throng in a basement that is too narrow, too dark, too noisy.
In one of the many nostalgic articles on the ongoing 1990s revival, it was recently read that the decade at that time was essentially characterized in terms of pop culture by Tamagotchi, ass antlers, nirvana and techno. Can you sign something like this? But it’s also possible that while you’re trying to get the lyrics to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” together, a muppet-esque squeaky voice keeps chanting in the back of your mind that it’s “Insane In The Brain”. The hit of Cypress Hill – and above all: this brain-piercing groaning voice – was at least as omnipresent at that time as the unfortunate back tattoos. And today? Kurt Cobain isn’t alive anymore, the techno greats of yore are all cultural advisors or something, only Cypress Hill is still around and they do… well, they still do exactly the same thing. On the new album “Back In Black” (BMG Rights / Warner) there are drum loops that you think you know from the debut (and that was released in 1991!), over which the Californians squeak the same we-super-you-not- tirades like before. Hip-hop, which has passed the past 20 years completely without a trace. But why should one blame the middle-aged gentlemen for seizing the moment? If revival is right now, then right now take a few dollars with you.
About the stage name Helmut one can argue. Some automatically think of Kohl, others of the helpless taxi driver in Jim Jarmusch’s “Night On Earth”. But you shouldn’t let that distract you. The Berlin musician Adrian Schull is now releasing his album “My Interstellar Love Life” (Wordandsound) as Helmut, and fortunately that sounds less like the CDU and more like an indie film: cautious living room pop miniatures, restrained percussions, a few warm synthesizer chords, the singing never so loud that it could disturb the neighbors. There’s a hint of old Berlin wave pop, a little in between Alt-Jand if you like, you can also have a long-distance relationship Bon Iver listen out. Playful, likeable – and extremely well suited for the first sunny afternoons on the window sill.