The return of the best German-language hard drive.
While at the end of 2008 large parts of European pop society, under the spell of a kind of mass hypnosis, covered themselves with the Christmas album from the supposed rock saviors Glasvegas, the Cologne indie darlings Locas In Love released what was probably the most lasting pop record of the season. Glasvegas are, ahem, yesterday’s news, but WINTER still lives up to its universal title today.
The longing for a small space filled with lovely people
Lines like “I’m arriving by train on Saturday, can someone pick me up?” masterfully combine fixed points of celebration in a small space: the longing for exactly that, a small space filled with lovely people. Plus the merciful gesture of receiving after the journey, even if not “in a one horse open sleigh”, driving home for Christmas. If Locas in Love were British, they would be able to do so thanks to the royalties from their snappy “Christmas No. 1 Hit” in Saus’n’Braus live like Hugh Grant in “About A Boy”.
In the most ingenious move, they pack the Black Flag stick “Machine” into a Santa Claus bag: “I’m not a machine, cold or not, I won’t work.” Let’s remind ourselves of this refrain every now and then in what will certainly be anything but quiet times! Long out of print, these ten and a half touching songs, produced between Cologne and Brooklyn, are now being released again as a hand-numbered limited edition with all sorts of extras such as a 68-page band diary.