When the night was deepest, Tocotronic came and spread a warm blanket over us. In the misty pandemic spring of 2020, the biggest German rock band that never wanted to be a German rock band released the song “Hoffnung”. And maybe because it worked out so well; because this beautiful piece carried by strings, in which no one wanted to artificially soothe or agitate us, actually provided comfort through empathy and honest complicity, Tocotronic are now releasing an entire album full of “songs about general vulnerability, mental turmoil and existential helplessness” like the Band writes in the statement on their 13th album NIE DER WAR.
Here the consolation lies in the ritual
When the church bells ring in the opener of the same name, while Dirk von Lowtzow solemnly tells a story that is more about internal wars than social conflicts – then you know immediately what the hour has struck: Here the consolation lies in the ritual. NIE DER WRIEG sounds neither like an old nor like a new album by Tocotronic, but like a dear, soft-focus memory of listening to Tocotronic.
? Buy NEVER AGAIN WAR at Amazon.de
In the past few years, the band had very cautiously but noticeably entered new territory with each album, whether they embraced pop like never before on the RED ALBUM or on the late coming-of-age record DIE INENDLICHKEIT was abstraction times abstraction let. But now Tocotronic sound like they’re playing their old tricks – but with the poise and wisdom of a band that sees its own history as a treasure trove rather than a burden. Even if this story means the world to many people.
There are the Sonic Youth-like dissonances in “Come with me into my free world”, the Tocotronic-typical, finely turned cleverness (“We’re going under / Furthermore ran / Into history / That must be clear to you / If you getting involved with us…”), the mockery of the early days, which is performed today without self-deprecating sighs, but still with pretty everyday observations (see: “I hate it here”). And yes, the “Hope” literally made it onto the record.
The band’s unexpected return to t-shirt-worthy slogans
NIEDER WAR is the essence of this band, as it exists in the minds of many (maybe: most?) fans, but definitely more than routine myth management, because the four of them, as always, shook fantastic melodies out of their sweater sleeves. And yet here you can see this group, which was always so much more agile, so much quicksilver than the majority of their scene colleagues in Germany, congealed into a monument for the first time.
“Godless youth against fascism” is written on the simple plaque on the monument, which today’s left-wing youth movement looks at somewhat helplessly, while the other visitors stand and marvel: at Arne Zank’s whipping drums in this beautiful, simple single; about the band’s unexpected return to slogans worthy of being printed on a t-shirt, and about the fact that the piece about youthful dreams and skateboards still gets you after the first wanting to find it anachronistic – because Tocotronic is pressing the obvious buttons here, but stop also the right ones, and obviously enjoy it. It gets even better (or rather: completely different great) when the wonderful Soap & Skin enters the marble base of the monument in the song “I dive up”. Yes, one could say NEVER AGAIN WAR is a place of pilgrimage. But it’s a damn nice one.
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