Sturm und Twang! A Private Collection of German Underground Pop – Review

Sturm und Twang!

A Private Collection of German Underground Pop (Big Cat)
by Nik Rainey

What’s the most surprising thing about the new German rock underground? Probably that it exists at all. Deutcheland has certainly produced some innovative and influential noise-makers – Can, Faust, Kraftwerk, Neubauten, and of course, Falco – but the thought of a post-reunification explosion of indie Krautpop seemed about as likely as a musical comedy version of Shindler’s List.

Well, I can just shut my jingoistic gob right now, ’cause Sturm und Twang!, a 20-band compilation of some of the neetist tunage from the cream of today’s Teutonic youth, has arrived. And it proves that, A) the Brits and Yanks do not own a monopoly on groundbreaking squawk, and B) Nik should’ve paid more attention in freshman German class. Almost every track on this comp is an unlikely hybrid, grafting bits and pieces from the Anglo-American scrapheap onto the bent frame of a troubled culture to create bizarre new contraptions that tilt under their own weight but speed down the Alternabahn with factory precision. At its best, it puts our own increasingly inspiration-starved scene to shame.

I don’t have the space to rave about every track (hell, I barely have the space to list all the bands), so here are a few of the highlights: Die Goldenen Zitronen offer up anti-fascist hip hop with electroshock organ and buzzing guitar and sound like politicized Beastie Jungen. Kastrierte Philosphen melds an oddly moving passage from Bryon Gysin’s beat novel The Process to twinky dance-pop. Blumfeld‘s “Verstarker” is a beautifully controlled take on Brit post-punk that proves they deserved their recent domestic release. F.S.K.‘s wistful country-folk compares favorably with Cracker’s slower numbers (hardly surprising, since Cracker’s David Lowery performed on the track, in addition to producing it). Zen-Faschisten has a ballsy name, silly English lyrics, and a sound like the result of an unholy tryst between Beat Happening and Tones on Tail. Lassie Singers sing a femme-pop ode to their hometown of Hamburg that shows, if nothing else, that there’s no German equivalent to the phrase “fuckin’ brill.” Mutter‘s angry rant against reunification, “Du Bist Nicht Mein Bruder” (“You are not my brother”) is scarier in its implications than Neubauten’s harshest primal scream. And then there’s Ostzonensuppenwürfelmachenkrebs – I’m not gonna talk about the song, I just wanna piss off the typesetter.

If there are any deficiencies to Sturm und Twang!, it’s just that one or two of the bands are too obviously derivative (Tocotronic is so Nirvana-damaged that they should change their name to Bush). And I wish that compiler Christoph Gurk had included English translations of the lyrics – some of these guys sound like they actually have something to say. But these are minor qualms. This is a great collection, and anyone with their ears attuned to frequencies from across the pond should hoard their pfennings and snap this up toot sweet. Das ist gut!