Einstürzende Neubauten

The Jewels

(Potomak)

Record Review by Marcel Feldmar

Difficult listening. Even more difficult describing. I’ve long been a fan of this band, solely through my slight obsession with pretty much anything connected to Nick Cave, but I rarely find myself sitting back and relaxing to the soothing sounds of Einstürzende Neubauten. I think the last time I did that was in 1989 with 1989’s Haus Der Lüge. So I’m a little curious to hear what 2008’s The Jewels has in store for me. Especially since head honcho Blixa Bargeld has left Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds fold to concentrate on this band.

Granted, I’m much more of a fan of melody over noise, though noise has its place, and this band has its roots in some of the more dissonant and industrial sounds that have graced the recorded world, so what may be chaos and crash to my ears might be a brilliant return to the glory days for others. Bargeld and friends are not known for their stylistic cohesiveness, and here, at least in that non-linear sense, they are at their best. A concept album of sorts, the band members would pick at random a card, which would have some reference to a sound or mood or vision from anywhere within the impressive Neubauten catalogue, and then with those cards they would find their way through a song. While this technique was applied to each song, the album as a whole is a strange collection of entirely separate structures. The thing that pulls it together is the knowledge that every sound comes from the same strange universe.

Each song, could in fact, probably inspire an entirely different album, but held together right here it all seems to fit into some bizzaro world soundtrack to a film, possibly directed by Wim Wenders, that’s been based on your most surreal nightmares. We start out with a strange dark carnival cabaret that moves quickly against Bargeld’s version of an evil Master of Ceremonies. Then suddenly we are in some falling water with dangling chains and metallic jarring shots of electricity as Blixa chants “Mei Ro” over and over again, and then we’re at song # 3. This one moves somewhere between a minimalist Nurse With Wound and a somewhat fractured Throbbing Gristle. “Hawcubite” falls next, with Blixa moving into some spoken and deadly hushed vocals, touching on some Bad Seed moods, but with more menace and evil layered into the sounds behind his voice. The songs are all seemingly very short, finishing anywhere between one and 3 minutes, causing a little frustration to the listener, or at least, me – as it seems that as soon as I actually “get” the song, it’s done. “Die Libellen” clocks in at 1:43 with a touch of that good old “What’s he building in there?” Tom Waitsian noise poetry.

Then we drift into a broken nursery rhyme music box mangle of sounds, soft and discordant, but then slowly transforming into solid rhythm and melody, as Bargeld whisper sings over it all. A strangely comforting voice, considering I don’t understand a word. “Epharisto” has a slight strangled kabuki sound to it, warped and wavering. Then, I think, my favorite song title on the album, “Robert Fuzzo”. This one slides in like some demented film noir as directed by David Cronenberg with a soundtrack scored by Barry Adamson gone bad. The songs continue and the noises wax and wane like industrial lunar cycles. Static hisses and bone shivering sounds. The mood throughout the album is definitely more on the mellow side, but pieced together as it is, with the sounds scraping against the insides of your skull, the mellowness makes for a relaxing environment to get completely disturbed within. The strange metallic dance beat of “Ansonsten Dostoyevsky”, the throbbing blues of “Am I Only Jesus”, and the final crashing mayhem of sound and whispering dementia in “I Kissed Glenn Gould”.

That said, this is definitely one Einstürzende Neubauten album that I might actually be able to sit back and enjoy quite a few more times. There’s enough going on in here to make each listen a different experience, and that is a wonderful thing.