Headphones #105: Gravögl and the Liada from there

Imma is somewhere, sings Thomas Gravogl with great urgency in his voice, while the guitars oscillate between folk and rock, between great melancholy and a spirit of optimism. The song that gives the title to the band’s second album from the Mostviertel in Lower Austria suggests that Gravogl and his band Gravögl are a great storyteller. Someone who doesn’t have to look out into the wide world because what happens on their own doorstep can also happen anywhere in the world.

The lightness of being a child is reflected in the Dylan-style floating “Hochwossaliad”. The poet and singer reminisces about when fish were caught with hands, about football games in the mud and (forbidden) summit attacks on the mountains of bulky waste next to the road. And in everything they did, the parents were at the end, they say. You can imagine the mischievous smile.

Furious finale with the “Schrattl”

The finest folk also characterizes “Sie was now, that es ois wida wiad”, a song about a girl who doesn’t know where to go and comes to someone who gives her the feeling that there is a way out of every valley. And at the end there is “Schrattl”, a song that tells emphatically about the Waldschratt, who withdrew from the system to live in the caves of the hard coal mining behind the Traisen. He just wanted to be left alone, but people were afraid of him. They chase him, who no one will miss, and he runs away. A song that mercilessly sums up people’s fear of others.

Gravögl: “Imma is somewhere” (Bader Molden Recordings)