Die Leute die hier wohnen sind wahrscheinlich nicht mehr wach.
Oder bin ich alleine?
Stören würde es mich nicht.
The people who are living here are probably not awake anymore.
Or am I alone?
I wouldn’t mind.
It’s funny, when all of a sudden you rediscover music that you’ve cherished a lot for a while. It is also strange when you realise that you don’t have a clue why you abandoned that music in the first place. I mean, we all go through phases. There’s the time when you get really into deep house. Then there’s the time as a teenager when all you want to listen to is skatepunk from Millencolin to Bad Religion to NOFX. Or the time you find yourself listening to radio pop – not admitting it, but you love it! It is only natural that tastes or preferences change over the course of time. You not only grow up like that, you also grow as a person. And that naturally includes adopting a different view on life. A different perspective on politics, friendship, the environment and of course music.
So listening to this new record by German band Adolar reminds me of the time I bought its predecessor. I was visiting a friend of my then girlfriend in Cologne. I had read about a certain record shop there and really wanted to pay it a visit. When I finally went in, my girlfriend and her two friends didn’t understand, that I could have spent hours browsing through piles of vinyl. So while they smoked a cigarette outside, I had enough time to go through some racks – mainly the new arrivals. I picked up the Touché Amore and La Dispute split seven-inch and Zu den Takten des Programms by Adolar. I was very happy. I had excelled and managed to grab two records without a lot of time. I was even happier, when I finally got to put the needle on the orange grooves of the album. The album had a great sense of university life. The lyrics were poetic, yet managed to capture certain moments I could easily relate to. And the music was top-notch too. I loved the grooves, the chopped rhythms and the screamo influences.
The new record then, is great. Period. It is different. Natural evolvement does not make a halt for bands neither. So the new songs sound slightly bigger. There are tiny details spread across the songs – a choir here, a synthesizer there, the guitar interplay that you can make out when you pay attention and so on. Overall the production makes it sound a little cleaner and more polished than its predecessor. While the Adolar’s older songs were reminders of wild nights, torn love or a sense of displacement, the new songs seem more reflected. Yet they still have the lyrical quality to be very accurate observers of their social surroundings. If it’s the ever cooling social relationships, the ever dulling life or running away with the love of your life.
Musically Adolar were never a band to paint everything in pastiche colors, but on this record they’ve reached a new high in terms of drabness and misanthropy. It all falls into place perfectly. The Television style guitars, the dry drums and the weird details. If you give this a listen, you know what I mean. Not for a long time has someone painted such a bleak image of his home. And I can only agree with Tom Mischok. Die Kälte der neuen Biederkeit might not be the soundtrack to Armageddon, but it is a perfect mirror to society. We don’t care about each other anymore. We are just looking at ourselves. While Berlin is the center for wanna be neo-hippies and drug infused drop-outs, the middle class is stumbling backwards into stubborn blindness and self-loathing. But while past generations took to the streets to rebel, we’re imprisoned, yes paralysed by our own indifference. Not a nice picture, but one that is worth thinking about. And this album is worth listening to, talking about and buying.
With this record, Zeitstrafe Records are releasing another great album. What a run the small record label is having lately. With more Songs like that they are becoming more and more important for the German indie-label scene. While others are dying Zeitstrafe is cementing their place as a fortress of good music. Hats off to that! And hats off to this great album!
Adolar – Die Kälte der neuen Biederkeit is out on 06.09. via Zeitstrafe/Indigo. You can order it via the band here.
