Music: Indian skirt for Valentine’s Day: New studio work from Tocotronic

A new record, and that on Valentine’s Day: On Friday, the band Tocotronic, which is based in Hamburg, will launch her new work: singer and guitarist Dirk von Lowtzow, bassist Jan Müller and drummer Arne Zank on February 14th already a fourteenth studio album in the pop musical race.

It bears the promising title “Golden Years”. And it comprises twelve, the listeners sometimes gently hugging, but also slightly shaking pieces. And again, you know that from the band, which it likes to puzzle and likes it, it is also full of irony and ambiguities. In an interview with the German Press Agency, the band explains that they are happy about the release date, just for the day of the lovers.

Is it even a love album? “I think it’s a very tender album,” explains Tocotronic bassist Jan Müller in an interview. But you shouldn’t be wrong: a few months ago, the first single was released: “Because you know what you do”. A catchy piece of skirt with a serious background: “These people are dangerous because they know what they do”.

“A lot of what is progressive is just threatened”

A few days before the Bundestag election, you can hardly avoid seeing the piece in which Monster Trucks can be seen in a kind of frenzy of destruction in a warning of political drives. Lowtzow sings: “That’s why you have to fight them because they become more numerous”. Bassist Müller says in the interview: “A lot of what is progressive is just threatened, and that’s totally creepy.” Singer of Lowtzow adds: “You cannot avoid responsibility and you also have to take responsibility as a band. That is why the song was deliberately set”.

But Tocotronic would not be Tocotronic if the supposed instructions in the fight against all right (under the video for the song the band set the hashtag “NOAFD”) would not be broken somehow: “If we kiss them on the mouths,” it says Namely in the play, “we make them cold faster”.

Songs that embark on

Immediately in the ear, several of the new pieces flatter: For example, the magnificent opener “Death is just a dream”. The catchy “As I escaped myself” can even be in the recipient ear: singers and songwriters from Lowtzow finds such beautiful, as much puzzling language images: “And I stayed firmly on your outstretched arm”. The whole thing is flanked by all -round famous guitar figures.

Speaking of: guitarist Rick McPhail has also participated in the creation of the album. After the recordings, however, the American native took a “break” for an indefinite period: Tocotronic are now a trio again. Just like in the early days in the mid-nineties when the band also set trends fashionably with its alternative-student look: Tocotronic and washed-out training jackets were once called a breath.

Today you can see the three well -aged men in the white shirt collar. The song title “I will never change”, from the third Toctronic-Album, was just 29 years ago a winking, albeit fine misleading.

Three decades “digital is better”

Just a few weeks after the publication of the new longplayer, the band has an anniversary: ​​In March the first 30 years ago, the first, not only fans highly revered “Digital is better” was launched. At that time, in the spring of 1995, the firstling of the indicator was a little sensation. Tocotronic was the third best band of the year for the pop journal “Spex”. A music show by the Hessischer Rundfunk raised the album to 1st place in the year. When 2023 the “Rolling Stone” chose the 500 best records “ever”, the work landed in 200th place. Two places before the debut of today’s overStars of Coldplay.

“But you have to be grateful,” says “Golden Years”, “if you still meet people, not just as a click on Spotify”. Is that perhaps the antithesis for the “digital is better” once called on the debut? No, one to one one should not read the texts of this band that is so important for German pop music anyway: “One to one is over now”, from Lowtzow finally announced on the legendary white album from 2002. Today the front man responds in an interview The question of whether Tocotronic can always be trusted at the text with a laughing one: “Hopefully not!”.

Opportunities to meet the “people” mentioned in the title song will be sufficiently available in the coming weeks: the band is on the move in Germany, Austria and Switzerland to present the new work, this in such a warm way. It starts on March 19 in the Leipzig rock cellar. Just two days later, singer Dirk von Lowtzow celebrated his 54th birthday at the tour of a youth movement on the band’s debut in 1995: “I want to be part of a youth movement in Nuremberg.