Indie Tag

This new Nada Surf album is really good. I have been listening to „You Know Who You Are“ every day for weeks and it just keeps getting better. I will say that it is my favorite one since 2002’s „Let Go“. It will be out on March 4 and you should all buy it now! If there is one thing I could change about the album it’s probably the sequencing. I’d have it start with „New Bird“ (which is actually track 4). I immediately loved this one while the actual openerRead More

The internet only offers some rare finds these days. With it, we seem to be overwhelmed by choices and fall into the trap of listening to the music backed by big money to buy our attention. Without it, I wouldn’t have come across a great little band from Montclair, New Jersey though: Pinegrove. At first it was the voice of Evan Stephens Hall on a song called Angelina, then the energy and lyrics of Recycling and finally the mixture of emo, indie and country sprinkles from Old Friends. I haveRead More

When I get asked to review new hyped band – especially from Berlin – I usually don’t expect anything. Which makes it even nicer when I am proven wrong. This has been the case with todays’ band Isolation Berlin. The four boys have recently been mentioned a lot in feature pages and it seems as if everyone agrees that they are the future of German pop music. The pressure therefore is obviously on and everyone expects their debut album Und aus den Wolken tropft die Zeit to be a hugeRead More

A Tale of Golden Keys are just great. We talked about our love for last year’s album Everything Went Down As Planned and now Three Weeks is the next single from it. Do you remember the piano in the swimming pool in the video for All Of It? It plays an important part in this video again. Just listen to the song and enjoy the slow visuals popping bye and let the little story unfold. I’m sure there’s a deeper meaning to it and I have my own theory. ButRead More

Most people remember Daughters’ debut album „If you leave“ from 2013. It was one of those records that left you (and definitely me) sobbing and sad after listening to it. Not only because of the themes and lyrics, which by themselves were depressing enough, but also because of the fragile sound of Elena Tonras’ voice and the voluminous sound created by Igor Haefelis’ guitars and Remi Aguilellas’ drum. This sound is also the reason why the trio gets often compared to The XX. Yet, I personally would not agree withRead More

Do you remember German bands like Schrottgrenze, Wohlstandskinder oder Mikroboy? At the start of the 2000s, the hype around UK indie bands reached German shores and here too were a lot of young and talented bands. The labels signed everything and everyone able to hold a guitar and singing in German. Some of those bands were really good, some were good enough for a single or two. Heinrich II from Kassel are a new band, but they remind me a lot of that time. Guitars, German vocals, well produced popRead More

In 2001 the TV in my room was the gateway to the world. I was living with my parents in a small town in the deepest South-West of Germany, right next to the border of Switzerland and France (yes, that’s three countries in a few mile radius). Music television was a thing back then. MTV still played video clips. Do you remember that? I didn’t really have the chance to go to many gigs because that would have involved a 2 hour drive to Zürich in order to get toRead More

One of the best songs on A Tale of Golden Keys‘ album got a nice little video. It’s great how quickly you fall in and out of love with records these days. Day one you listen to two or three songs and you’re instantly hooked. Come the next week, the album shows up in your playlist or in your library and you think: „Well, yeah, it’s still quite good, but I don’t fancy listening to it now…“. Then come the next month and you’ve forgotten about it. There’s just soRead More

I’m a few thousand meters above the ground right now. I’m really hungover and longing for my own bed. I hate the people on this plane with me right now. I hate that I’ll be facing the cold Berlin night in about an hour. But what I hate most is that my apartment will be cold and dark when I will finally get there. I left the fridge pretty much empty and turned the heating down to a minimum when I left it a few days ago. You don’t wantRead More

Hype bands are always quite a difficult thing to deal with. I mean, what do you make of a band that just formed and instantly gets voted as the band of the week, by one of the biggest German daily newspapers? When a band is selling out venues without even having released a full album (or an EP). Kytes from Munich are the band in question in this case and On the Run is the name of their debut EP. The first time I took notice of the band, IRead More