In the admittedly rather unlikely event that someone has forgotten that love is the overriding theme of pop music, we recommend the band’s new album The Government. The formation around Tilman Rossmy, which was considered part of the Hamburg School in its first incarnation, has been purring like a well-oiled machine since its comeback in 2017, expanding its canonical work with a new album every two years – and dedicating itself more and more and now consciously almost exclusively to this object that has actually been sung to death.
While the band pulsates calmly and relaxed like a heart in love, the now 67-year-old Rossmy sings of past love (“The pain is me”) and of very fresh, still completely selfless love (“You can’t give me anything”). But it’s about more than just love for other people, but about love as the basis of the human condition. Rossmy formulates this idea programmatically in “Love Like Breathing”: “Love is not a doing, love will always love, being will always be, being will always love, love will always be.”
If that doesn’t comfort you, then perhaps the song “Today is a good day” will, which is of course again about love, but also about the fact that even if this day is a good day to die on, that can still be a very hopeful prospect. In the very next piece, “Wherever I go, I’m already there,” the great songwriter Rossmy rhymes “Yes, I keep trying” with “And I’m sure I’ll fail.” This is not nihilism, but rather a liberating fatalism that can be sure that in the end one thing remains: love remains.
This review appears in Musikexpress 3/2026.
