Reviews

Tapete

Bärchen Und Die Milchbubis Endlich Komplett Betrunken LP

A new collection of the (almost) complete works of early ’80s German group BÄRCHEN UND DIE MILCHBUBIS, who brought a playful naivety and shambolic charm to the Neue Deutsche Welle—their smiling teddy bear mascot was like a knowing wink that they were operating on a different wavelength than, say, D.A.F. or MALARIA! The stripped-down, melodically off-kilter bash of their 1980 debut EP Jung Kaputt Spart Altersheime was very much of a piece with their Hannover scene peers and labelmates HANS-A-PLAST, and by 1981’s follow-up LP Dann Macht Es Bumm, BÄRCHEN UND DIE MILCHBUBIS had developed a more fully-realized sense of self, one that artfully encompassed 39 CLOCKS covers (taking the VELVETS-gone-electro drone of “DNS” and turning it out like NICO fronting KLEENEX), sparse drum machine pop (back to that local 39 CLOCKS connection!) breaking into a full-on pogo charge on “Manager,” solemn, brittle post-punk (“Tiefseefisch”), and proto-twee/C86 jangle (“Muskeln”), all without fully abandoning their initial wild, freewheeling punk spirit (see “Pogo Liebt Dich” and “Spaß” for proof positive). One of Dann Macht Es Bumm’s fourteen tracks got left behind on what is otherwise an exhaustive round-up of the MILCHBUBIS discography (where’s “Hab Doch Keine Angst”?!), but there’s a handful of live tracks circa ’80–’83 and a 2021 re-do of “DNS” to make up for it; more than enough bang for your buck.

Carambolage Carambolage LP / Eilzustellung-Exprès LP reissues

The French word “carambolage“ basically translates to “collision” or “crash,” an etymology that suited the purposely disjointed sound of these early ’80s Neue Deutsche Welle practitioners exceedingly well. Their self-titled LP from 1980 bears a number of very of-the-era German post-punk hallmarks—unsettling synth flourishes; highly dramatic vocals (cf. NINA HAGEN) that are squealed, shouted, chanted and spit; stilted, choppy rhythms with forays into tangled no wave noise—and at their bleakest, like on “Tu Doch Nicht So,” there’s an early industrial-meets-deathrock vibe in the clattering, hypnotic drum patterns and general atmosphere of unease that’s dead-on West Berlin despite the band actually hailing from rural Fresenhagen. But CARAMBOLAGE wasn’t content to stay in one place for too long, as they careen from the the SLITS-like feral feminine energy of “Rampenlicht” with its insistent bass pulse and breathless girl-gang backing vocals, to organ-driven, carnivalesque (nightmarish?) kitsch in “Das Männlein,” to the see-sawing, KLEENEX-but-darker art-punk delirium of “Was Hat Das Für Einen Sinn.” The group then expanded from a trio to a quartet for 1982’s Eilzustellung-Exprès, a tighter and (at times, at least) more conventionally pop-minded, new wave-ready effort than their debut, but that’s all relative. The opening pairing of “Vollgeturnt” and “Eingeschneit” translates the GO-GO’S into German with girl-group-influenced harmonies and effervescent power pop jangle (a few years before LES CALAMITÉS would do much the same en français), and the English-sung “Take Me” is a slice of proto-DELMONAS swinging ’60s-via-’80s mod-pop, but there’s still plenty of lipstick traces left behind from the preceding record—the blurts of sax and stark rhythmic tumble in “Die Zeit,” the hyper-expressive vocals over the asymmetrical lurch of “Widerlich,” etc. CARAMBOLAGE hasn’t had the same sort of reverberant reach that made their contemporaries like MALARIA! and ABWÄRTS bootleg punk shirt staples in the present day, but hopefully these first-time reissues of their two proper LPs will do something to help turn that around.

Comet Gain Fireraisers Forever! LP

For the uninitiated, COMET GAIN has been at it since the mid-’90s, crafting their own kaleidoscopic cut-up sound that draws equally from C86-style indie-pop, the hip-swinging stomp of Motown and Northern soul, raw ’60s garage, and technicolor mod beat. Fireraisers Forever! is perfect micro-synthesis of the full COMET GAIN spectrum—there’s the punky pinned-in-the-red rave-ups (“Werewolf Jacket” and “We’re All Fucking Morons”), some cracked psychedelia (“The Girl With the Melted Mind and Her Fear of the Open Door,” which sounds like the TELEVISION PERSONALITIES if they’d been raised on Slampt Records instead of SYD BARRETT), and sunny jangle-pop strum in the mid-’80s Sarah/Creation Records mold (“Mid 8Ts” and “Society of Inner Nothing”), all expertly executed, never falling into the trap of hollow pastiche. The greatest band going; hope they keep it up for another twenty years.

Eight Rounds Rapid Love Your Work LP

EIGHT ROUNDS RAPID is a four-piece from Essex whose guitarist Simon Johnson is the son of the great Wilko Johnson, who held the equivalent position in DR. FEELGOOD’s original/classic lineup. I would usually feel a bit bad about going straight for this sort of trivia at the beginning of a review, but Wilko had Simon and his pals support him on tour twice, so they can’t really object to anyone else leaning on the family connections. As it goes, Love Your Work—the third 8RR album—is a pub-belligerent punk blues affair whose DNA has a fair bit of FEELGOODs in more than a literal sense, and the guitar sound is possibly the best thing about it. That reads like faint praise, I know, but it’s a dead nice tone. David Alexander’s sarky-talky vocals, a heads-down approach to rhythms and occasional breaks from the norm (“Retro Band” eschews the rock for a wobbly and vaguely experimental gripe at, possibly, hipsters which seems to be going for a SLEAFORD MODS thing and doesn’t really work) make this album feel a bit like a BBC 6 Music listeners’ version of HEAVY METAL (as in the Berlin band). That also reads like faint praise, and I suppose is in this case.

Hans-a-Plast 2 LP reissue

All three LPs from early German punks HANS-A-PLAST have recently been brought back into circulation thanks to Tapete, but 1981’s 2 (their second, duh) is their most striking, and I’d argue their best. The band’s self-titled 1979 debut was a relatively trad take on the wind-up punky energy of the BUZZCOCKS, with a streak of wild X-RAY SPEX abandon in vocalist Annette Benjamin’s animated delivery, and just as those groups fractured into new projects on the cusp of post-punk so that they could push into more challenging musical directions, 2 likewise finds HANS-A-PLAST deconstructing some of the rigid first-wave boxes in which they’d placed themselves on the first LP. It might not be immediately apparent when the speedy pogo-punk opener “Spielfilm” kicks in, but it soon will be, from the sax that skronks over the rattling rhythm of “Reicher Vati,” to the punctuated, stop/start jabbing and steadily more unhinged gang vocals in “Humphrey Bogart,” to the loopy KLEENEX-ish post-punk tumble of “Kunde Und Vieh” and “Kurz und Dreckig,” to Annette’s trills, squeals, and general motor-mouth chattering starting to take on character that’s much more Neue Deutsche Welle than Poly Styrene. By 1983’s swan-song Ausradiert LP, the tone had gotten a little darker and more dour—not quite goth, but rubbing elbows with the likes of XMAL DEUTSCHLAND or MALARIA!, and with less of the eccentric spark that made this second album so special. Weird, fun, just the right amount of messy and shambolic; the golden ratio of early ’80s Euro art-punk.

Östro 430 Keine Krise Kann Mich Schocken (Die Kompletten Studioaufnahmen 1981-1983) LP

A key band in the German Neue Deutsche Welle movement of the late ’70s and early ’80s, the all-female Düsseldorf quartet ÖSTRO 430 had punk ambitions that were somewhat blunted by their more bouncy, day-glo pop tendencies—no guitar, lots of keyboard, bursts of saxophone, hooks all over the place. Keine Krise Kann Mich Schocken is a complete anthology of the group’s studio recordings, collecting their two LPs from 1981 and 1983 (both long out-of-print and only ever available as German pressings) with a handful of previously unreleased takes. Much like ROMEO VOID or the French band EDITH NYLON, ÖSTRO 430 paired their punky new wave with lyrical themes that were far more subversive than the upbeat danceability of the songs might easily let on, detailing concerns (in German) focused primarily on sex, feminism, and gender roles in a modern world. The material from the first album Durch Dick and Dünn is generally more sparse and ramshackle, including the group’s exemplar jam “Sexueller Notstand” which puts down ineffective lovers over a foundation of anxious drumming, budget-sounding keyboards, a perfectly minimalist bouncing bass line, and just a touch of wailing X-RAY SPEX-esque sax. By the time they followed up with their second LP Weiber Wie Wir, the keys had caught up to the synth-pop zeitgeist of the ’80s and gotten more slick and prominent, but there’s generally enough moments of raw tension like the dark, driving “Normal” to save things from fading into total new wave blandness. Definitely of interest to students of the international femme-punk underground!

Sophisticated Boom Boom Sophisticated Boom Boom LP reissue

Before teaching themselves the instruments that they would use to make timeless buzzsaw punk/C86 pop in CHIN CHIN, bassist Esther and drummer Marianne started out as co-vocalists in the ’80s-goes-’60s group SOPHISTICATED BOOM BOOM—three women up front at the mic with musical backing provided by all-male Swiss punks SOZZ, offering up malt shop sounds for the new wave age. With a band name lifted from the SHANGRI-LAS and more than a few song titles that could have been pulled straight from the RONETTES/CHIFFONS/SHIRELLES (“Jimmy Jimmy,” “Ready to Dance,” “Yeah Yeah Yeah,” etc.), the girl group influence on SOPHISTICATED BOOM BOOM’s 1982 LP is just as pronounced as it was in CHIN CHIN’s soaring-but-wistful, “Be My Baby”-layered harmonies, crashed through the wall of sound to hit more of a twist-and-shout garage beat with wailing sax and giddy teen dance energy. For all of the blatant retromania, there’s also some very de rigeur ’80s post-punk moves in the BOOM BOOM mix, like the spacious dub echo and spectral RAINCOATS-esque vocals in “Dance With Me,” or “Boom Boom Rap” snapping into some elastic downtown funk-punk, or the horn-spiked, PIGBAG’d polyrhythmic clatter of “Numa”—the result is almost precisely Red Bird meets Rough Trade, and it’s charming as hell.

The Wirtschaftswunder Salmobray LP reissue

This is a reissue of a Neue Deutsche Welle group with the least number of German members in the scene, consisting of a Czech guitarist, Italian vocalist, Canadian keyboardist, and a German drummer. The tunes oscillate from melodic on the opener “Analphabet” to abrasive and experimental on “Die Leute Sind Interessant.” The keyboards are at the helm on this one, with a dirty and distorted electric piano sound like the SCREAMERS, and the vocals more wacky and out-of-key.

The Wirtschaftswunder Preziosen & Profanes LP

The WIRTSCHAFTSWUNDER (German for “economic miracle,” and a reference to the rapid development of West Germany post-WWII) was from the weirder and more experimental side of the ’80s Neue Deutsche Welle. They were a truly multinational group, featuring members from Germany, Canada, Czechoslovakia, and an Italian singer (Angelo Galizia) who sang/shouted in heavily-accented German. Preziosen & Profanes compiles their first EP Allein along with a handful of early singles and assorted compilation tracks. Demented zolo strangeness abounds here, in the same league as RENALDO AND THE LOAF, Sweden’s KITCHEN AND THE PLASTIC SPOONS, or fellow Germans PALAIS SCHAUMBERG. There is a playful sense of unpredictability to these tracks, combining musique concrète found sounds, sampled speech, cartoonish synth-pop, toy instruments, and various electronic squalls—often within the same song. “Allein” is an upbeat synth-punker with Galizia’s furious howl at the forefront, while “Metall” layers industrial noise over piano and violin (the overall effect reminding me of “Silent Command” by CABARET VOLTAIRE). “Television” is a bouncy synth-pop number, while its B-side “Kommissar” is a cover of what I assume is an iconic ’70s German TV theme song. “Ich steh auf Hagen” stretches out to nearly five minutes of experimental thrashing about, driven by the same propulsive drumbeat until it all falls apart near the end. Tremendous fun.