The Chemnitz power pop quartet Power Plush has discovered its Love Language with its recently released second album of this title. It's about all the different facets of living together, gently embedded in compact walls of guitars with catchy choruses and pop-inspired verses. Faster, heavily guitar-driven, and less “plush” than on their debut album released in 2023, the new tracks clearly reflect the experience gained on various support tours, including with Kraftclub, Von Wegen Lisbeth, and Tocotronic, festival appearances, and their own tours. The sound, firmly rooted in the early 90s and reminiscent of American college rock, shines above all through its clever songwriting, which pushes all the right buttons and develops enormous hit qualities.
Machine music for delicate souls: cool vocals, monotonous drums from analog equipment, and raw guitars, timid, dabbed, and then rhythmic and driving again, with a synth here and there that knows no presets. The industrial-gloomy charm of the Berlin duo Afar is born from the tension between the organic and the electronic. They remain aloof and unassailable, always around the corner, a few steps ahead or behind. The two band members, Elena and Joseph, who describe their work unadornedly as “a collaboration between two musicians,” recorded the nine songs on Changing Rules over a period of three months in an old villa leased by an artists' collective and otherwise abandoned and left to the forces of nature. Everything was recorded live, at night or in the rain with the windowsopen,the sounds from the surroundings as much a part of it as the kalimba, the wind chimes, or a word dabbed here and there.
Like years ago, in the seven chambers of the Wu-Tang Clan, Berlin rapper Megaloh's new album is about Far Eastern symbolism in the urban struggle for survival. Discipline, spirituality, and minimalistic sound aesthetics are the cornerstones of the work, named after the mythical Schwarzer Lotus (black lotus) plant. Without Afrobeat influences, without flashy choruses and backing vocals, sparsely instrumented and rapped with the utmost restraint, most tracks need only a beat, a few loops, and clear raps to unfold their effect. As with the great clan's role models, there are repeated language samples from old kung fu films. Megaloh thus builds a bridge back to the music's country of origin and to a bygone era of hip-hop, providing a refreshing counterpoint to the street rap that is otherwise incredibly popular in Germany. A powerful manifesto of artistic independence, freedom, and sincerity.
The Düsseldorf duo Schreng Schreng & La La, acoustic folk rockers with a minimalist lineup of guitar and vocals (hence “Schreng Schreng” for the sound the guitar makes and “Lala” for the vocals), have modernized the somewhat dusty German "Liedermacher" (singer-songwriter) genre to pour their humorous and always politically charged folk into short song gems. Emotional and poetic, but calm and pointed, they paint a picture of a present that has reached a dead end with simple, open guitar chords. In August, they released their fourth studio album, Catch & Release, produced with several guest musicians on drums, sparingly used keyboards, and various guitars, which allowed them to significantly expand their stylistic diversity. In addition to idiosyncratic, quiet, and wise folk songs, the 11 short tracks also include a noisy punk number and even forays into pop. And for the biggest fans, the band's history has been available as a book since 2024, although so far only in German.
Pogendroblem, a mixed quartet that is part of Germany's impressively large and diverse punk scene, also comes from the center of the country. Fast, angry, edgy, and ideological: today's punk scene has taken a clear stance, standing for anti-fascism, freedom, grassroots democracy, and tolerance. But it's also about the personal level, being overwhelmed by increasingly difficult living conditions and a dwindling sense of security about the future; “No Future,” the slogan of the original punks from 1976, still seems relevant today. On their pessimistically titled fourth album, Great Resignation, Pogendroblemare in topform, their fast, precise punk is modern, aggressive, and full of attitude. The band produced a powerful portrait of the young German scene during the pandemic: their film Auf der Suche nach der Utopie (In Search of Utopia) can be viewed free of charge on YouTube. The excitement for next year's big punk anniversary is growing!
