The Notwist unveils a cohesive album of clashing styles
As the Notwist worked together on its new album, Close To The Glass (Sub Pop), the trio felt the songs were going in too many directions. Ultimately, the band gave up on finding a center and embraced the diversity.
“With this record, there were no rules anymore,” says frontman Markus Acher from his home in Munich. “We were always thinking about what the record could be and how it could sound, and what should be the general direction. The longer we worked on it, the more desperate we got, because every song sounded different. Then after awhile, we just thought maybe we should just concentrate on it and go in every direction we like, and don’t think too much about how it should sound in the end—just make it like a long collage.”
This outcome makes perfect sense when considering the band’s history. The Notwist is all about exploring possibilities: of the interface of acoustic and electronic, the planned and the unplanned, collaboration and revision, evolution and experimentation. The group has released only seven albums over the course of a 25-year career, and Close To The Glass is only the second since 2002’s landmark Neon Golden. But that is in large part because the band continually shifts its focus.
“I think we always try to make the gaps shorter between the records, but it always ends up like six years or so,” says Acher. “I guess it’s because there’s lots of other activities for all the different members.”
Markus and his brother Micha formed the Notwist in 1989 in Weilheim, Germany, beginning as an abrasive, hardcore punk trio, with Markus on guitar and vocals, Micha on bass and Martin Messerschmid on drums. They released two albums before adding keyboardist and programmer Martin Gretschmann for 1995’s 12.
“When Martin joined with electronics, sampler and stuff, in a way everything changed a lot,” says Markus. “We tried more and more to get everything we are interested in into the music. In the beginning, it was very—how should I say?—monochrome; very pure in a way. We played in the rehearsal space and then recorded in the studio, but with the third record, we started to experiment a little bit more, so those were kind of the two phases of the band.”
The keynote of that second phase is 2002’s quietly restrained Neon Golden, one of the earliest—and best—hybrids of guitar rock and pointillist electronics. Gretschmann brought his skills at programming, working with styles associated with German labels such as Kompakt and Morr Music. It was the album that brought the Notwist to the attention of the American indie-rock audience, with songs like the ringing “One With The Freaks” and the glitchy “Pick Up The Phone.” Neon Golden’s seamless synthesis has become commonplace since then, but at the time, it was at the vanguard, presaging albums such as the Postal Service’s Give Up.
Instead of riding Neon Golden’s momentum and working on a follow-up, the Notwist dispersed to work on other projects. The band returned in 2008, this time without Messerschmid. The Devil, You & Me was another tautly wound collection, but with a broader palette—a bit more aggressive in spots, a bit more diffuse in others, a lot more orchestrated at times. Then, another several years of projects with the other bands, and some Notwist work for a soundtrack, before work began on the next album.
That brings us to Close To The Glass, which embraces the abstract electronics of “Signals” and the insistent electric-guitar riff of “Kong” (a song inspired by listening to Stereolab, on which Markus recounts a flood during his childhood and a superhero he dreamed up who was part Superman and part King Kong). One of the simplest songs, “Casino,” was one of the most difficult. It started as an elaborate, orchestrated composition by touring drummer Andi Haberl that Gretschmann then remixed, then Markus added vocals and guitar; but when the band decided it wasn’t satisfied with it, Markus recorded an acoustic version, and that one, with few overdubs, is what ended up on the album. On the other hand, the nearly nine-minute “Lineri” is basically live in the studio, with everyone working synthesizers, electronic drums and keyboards.
Most songs went through so many transformations that even Markus has trouble hearing what’s acoustic and what’s electronic, what he may have played or what someone else did. Much of it was run through old analog, modular synthesizers that, according to Markus, “never do what you want them to do; they just have a life of their own. On the one hand, you put something in that is drums, and on the other end, there’s something coming out of this system that sounds totally different—like, I don’t know, a bass or violin or something.”
It’s an album of discrete stories, too, like an anthology, says Markus, who writes the lyrics. “Generally, for this record, I tried to not have the big theme or something,” he says. “Just to tell small stories or parts of stories, as if you read into a book and you just read one chapter and you don’t know the beginning or end. You skip into a life or a story. In a way, when I listen to the record now, I think of it like if you have a small town or street, and you go from window to window, and you look into the lives of different people who have different stories that everybody tells—all kinds of people, different ages, different backgrounds.”
In that way, the breadth of styles fits the subject matter; it’s a sequential journey. “The songs clash sometimes,” says Markus. “But in a way, in the end, they connected. Every song can stand on its own, but in the end, I wish people would listen to the whole.”
This spring, the band has music for a theater piece debuting in Berlin, and it will spend much of the year on the road. That’s the focus for now, but Markus knows the group will eventually be looking forward to the next possibilities, too.
“This Notwist record was so long now and so exhausting to make, so we’re really happy to tour now,” he says. “And after the touring for the Notwist, we will be really happy to concentrate on something different again, something that’s not song-oriented maybe or that goes in another direction.”
—Steve Klinge
