“We . . . will never leave this room./What are we going to do about this?”
On its latest release Germany’s The Notwist has developed a highly sophisticated and nuanced musical style to accompany their lyrical concerns. This is, without doubt, one of the most fascinating and extraordinary albums I’ve heard in some time.
The group mainly uses synthesized sounds (including most of the bass and percussion) arranged in unusual combinations with interweaving, complex rhythms. (The most conventional rhythmical and instrumental arrangements are found in “Pilot” and “One with the Freaks,” yet in both tracks the straightforward beat emerges gradually from layers of found noise and synthesized percussion.) In addition they also create intricate textures out of a mélange of musical instruments and noises.
In “Trashing Days,” for example, a solo banjo plays a repetitive motif in a minor key before being joined by synthesized bass and noise effects during the first verse. With the second verse, a percussion track is added, with the popping and hissing of a (or the original?) record prominently highlighted under the vocals. Finally, a reed ensemble and trap set join in. These various sounds continue in different combinations through the track, resulting in a captivating auditory experience in which the listener will discover novelty every time the disc is played.
Surprising instruments and sounds fascinate. One example is the reed ensemble mentioned above, a set of instruments not often used in rock music (excepting, of course, the saxophone). Other examples are the hurdy-gurdy or mellotron sound at the beginning of “Pick up the Phone” (somehow reminiscent of a similar sound in “Strawberry Fields Forever”); the buzz in the background of “Neon Golden,” possibly a snare drum vibrating to the noise of guitar and reeds; and the strings apparently appropriated from a record, but which evolve into a full-fledged string quartet.
The musical result is a gentle chaos, subtly controlled, but with startling moments of unexpected sounds and unusual rhythms and textures. This chaos through control provides a counterpoint to the lyrical content of the album. At first the lyrics seem hopelessly opaque, with few explicit references to provide meaning. Eventually, common words and themes begin to emerge. “Pick up the Phone” begins:
You know this place, you know this gloom?
We’ve been here before.
When life is a loop, you’re in a room
without a door.
Two tracks later, the singer of “This Room” returns to this theme through the same metaphor: “No matter what we say, no matter what we think, we will never, will never leave this room. What are we going to do about this?”
This theme of feeling trapped by circumstances is the main lyrical concern of the album. From the man in “Pilot” who’s “trying . . . to switch off time” to the plea in “Neon Golden,” “Don’t leave me here for I glow,” the singer of these songs is obsessed with stasis and isolation. But a shift occurs in “Off the Rails.” “We’re off the rails,” the singer says. Before, the singer would have exclusively focused on this dilemma.
Here, he poses a paradox: “We’re off this place doesn’t mean we’re somewhere else. This is all I know: keeping still to watch the engines come and go.” His stasis doesn’t lead to nowhere, but to a place where life is visible. In “Consequence” he concludes, “You’re the colour, you’re the movement and the spin. . . . I’m not in this song. Never.”
He finds freedom from stasis and isolation through the creation of music. Where he composes gentle chaos, still static because it is recorded, he uses this stasis to admire the person who’s “colour . . . movement . . . spin.” The listener benefits immen