“We are alone/ And we are two/ We have everything we need with us/ And that’s good, because times are getting wilder”. It’s the perfect start for an Element Of Crime concert, even though there are actually six of them on stage. You definitely have everything you need to be happy despite everything. They’ll be appearing in Berlin five times this week to collect enough material for a documentary that Charly Hübner is making about the band. The cameras are in all corners and on the ceiling, and it seems that Sven Regener is moving a little more now to give them a little something. Between the glorious trumpet playing and vocals, this is limited to waving your arms, raising your hands, and doing little lunges, and that’s totally okay. We’re not here for the show, we’re here for the music.
They start in the small private club in front of 250 people, where the water is running off the walls, it’s similarly hot in the Lido, and then someone even falls over in the SO36, that could also have been the euphoria. Things are a bit more civilized in the Admiralspalast, but the stage lighting there is spectacular, and in the Zitadelle Spandau they play into the sunset.
So the places increase from small to big, but the band hardly affects that. They are their own world once the three men who make up their core come together. Nothing against saxophone, accordion and bass, important for the atmosphere, but indispensable here, besides Regener, are of course guitarist Jakob Ilja and drummer Richard Pappik. The two are often underestimated because the main focus is on the singer/lyricist, but none of this would be possible without them. Since Charlie Watts died, no one sits behind the drums quite as gracefully as Pappik, who provides the foundation and never needs to brag. For “Four Hours before Elbe 1” he comes forward once with the harmonica, but disappears again in the semidarkness with the applause. Ilja has the right guitar tones, powerful yet understated, for each piece, and sometimes, when he smiles at the audience, you hope he knows it.
They’re not the type for greatest hits or anniversary events
Now it would be easy for Element Of Crime to rest on their laurels. There’s so much past. But they’re not the type for greatest hits or anniversary events. The cosiness they are sometimes accused of because their songs are a bit similar after almost 40 years cannot be felt on stage. There is probably a general misunderstanding here (which we know from AC/DC): The sound of Element Of Crime is simply so unique that they are always immediately recognizable and there are no epigones. They remain uncopyable. Which other German band can say that about themselves?
Every night there are nine songs from the new album “Morgens um Vier” – that’s more than a third of the setlist, and all are celebrated just as much as the classics. Tobias Bamborschke from Isolation Berlin is asked to come on stage for “Then you come back” and later Florian Horvath for the chorus for “Immer nur loved”. (Campino just sits in the audience at the Admiralspalast. That would have made an interesting duet, I would have suggested Who I Really Am.)
Of course it doesn’t work without the very best “White Paper” for all eternity, which surprisingly doesn’t come as an encore, but right in the middle, and “And you wait” and “Outside behind the window” have lost none of their magic either, and just before At the end they say “Go there”. In between, Regener rehabilitates the now rare word “Zausel” and Johannes Mario Simmel, in the lyrics the concentration of pigs and idiots is as usual high, it’s one big celebration. There can be no more moving music for people who know what longing is. For anyone waiting for someone to fix their heart, these are nights when it seems doable.
The concerts end with “When it gets dark and cold in Berlin”. Everyone smiles pensively when Regener sings about how the stones from the Spree are made to weep. Well possible at Element Of Crime. It’s still too warm when you step onto the street afterwards, and yet the city suddenly looks much nicer. The dirt seems to glitter, the stars light the way, people stagger innocently. At least to the next corner.