Notwist - A kraut-pop renaissance

Starting out from hardcore, evolving, and ending up ranked among the key members of the new kraut-rock scene. It might sound like a strange and seemingly illogical path, but think again if you've never listened to the Acher brothers' Notwist. Their self-titled debut album Notwist (1990) was a violent trip through punk dimensions not far removed from metal, while their 2002 breakthrough Neon Golden would be dominated by a melancholy sweetness, within sounds that brush up against indie-pop and electronica before venturing into hazy post-rock territory. And without disowning any of their past: indeed, at their live shows it's easy to take a genuine leap back in time, which the band explains this way: "After recording an album in such a long, meticulous way, we needed to crank the amp up and recapture onstage the urgency of our punk years. It's also important to show that we're not a pop band, and to reclaim our roots as old punks."

Never forget your origins: that seems to be the message Markus Acher, his brother Micha, Martin Messerschmid and Martin Gretschmann — the band's four members — want to convey. Not forgetting the past, certainly, but also not staying anchored to limiting preconceptions, and having real courage in experimenting with new directions. Ultimately, this is the defining trait of Notwist, traceable at every stage of a path that has inevitably influenced many of the other German acts connected in some way to the parent group. The post-rock experimentalism of Village Of Savoonga and the free jazz of Tied & Tickled Trio (both featuring the Acher brothers), or the beguiling music of Lali Puna (featuring Markus alone): these are the main outfits directly linked to Notwist, but other acts from the German scene, including Mina, with whom Micha collaborated on the recent "Expanded", also have concrete ties to the four.

Notwist present themselves as a perfectly ordinary band of pimply teenagers intent on combining their metal heart (their passport says Germany, not for nothing) with a dash of grunge leftovers (in the first half of the Nineties it was a crime not to listen to it) and the odd more indie-leaning nod (let's say Dinosaur Jr). The result sounds like a hard-to-classify pastiche somewhere between Metallica and Husker Du. The formula is laid out in archetypal form on their debut album Notwist (1990): here we find the more overtly hardcore-metal moments ("Think For Fourself" or "I've Not Forgotten You") alongside others that lean more toward alternative indie rock. It must be said that even in its harshest moments, Notwist manage to sketch out warm melodies worthy of latter-day Pixies. A sign of inscrutable genius. Granted, the heavily grunge-laden guitar riffs are tough going today, and you can sense the band was a bit past its sell-by date, listening back now. But Notwist's 1990 was, in effect, a faithful mirror of the 1990 of the alternative music being played all around them.

The follow-up Nook (1992) travels the same road: lightened-up punk-metal with melodic veins and grunge openings. Tracks like "Walk On" and "Welcome Back" represent the German band's musical architecture, with the snare drum marking out punk-metal rhythms, big guitars sketching hard-rock scenarios, and a melancholy vocal that tends to hide behind the wall of sound it has built. Alongside all this, one can also sense the first stirrings of something new, the first attempts to break free from the punk-metal creed: hence the noise experimentalism of Sonic Youth (the closing "I'm A Whale") or the dark-folk-like opening of "The Incredible Change of Our Alien," built around a banjo melody (an instrument later picked up again on "Neon Golden").

The first real turning point in Notwist's music comes with 12, effectively the German band's first step into post-rock, which right in the mid-'90s was living through its moment of glory. Just listening to the opening track "Torture Day" is enough to be catapulted into another world compared to the whirling punk-metal excess: here the tones become calmer, almost reflective, more relaxed. Post-rock atmospheres take shape. "12" is to all intents and purposes a transitional album, from punk metal to more experimental rock: already in this 1995 work one can glimpse in embryonic form what will happen in the future. Even though many of the tracks still show traces of metal riffage ("My Phrasebook," as well as "Puzzle") or grunge echoes ("M"), the band's struggle to break free from the stereotype is nonetheless perceptible in the way the melody unfolds, in its becoming something else, lightening the structure with purely post-rock instrumental passages ("The String"). Through all this, the indie rock approach remains foundational, both in the melodies and in the Pixies-like vocals.

The following Shrink makes the post-rock choice definitive: "Shrink was a turning point. By then we had said everything there was to say with screaming guitars. The pop elements became predominant, so we tried to integrate the sounds we loved most without worrying about the image we had or the public's tastes." Perhaps underrated (certainly compared to Neon Golden), Shrink becomes a pivotal record for the sound of the new Germany and for Notwist themselves. The indie lesson of Pixies and Dinosaur Jr has by now been learned by heart, just as the electronics of Pan Sonic have been fully absorbed. And it is precisely in this meeting between electronics and indie rock that the long wave of experimental rock is born and develops, one that would catch the attention of Radiohead, eager to break free from the Britpop melting pot. Tracks like "Day 7" and especially "Chemicals" are the archetype of what a few years later would be called "indietronica": the German brothers play with the formula, building simple, almost drum 'n' bass bases over which indie rock songs move. These are the first test transmissions that will lead to the codification of the genre with "Neon Golden."

The coordinates are clear by now: electronics is no longer just an occasional intrusion, but becomes a genuine trademark, alternating with rock/pop digressions. This brings us to Neon Golden and to an unexpected success. Definitions abound, because it's hard to pigeonhole an album like this: melody and sudden mad flourishes, blues moments and minimal electronic beats, post-rock echoes and other folk ones, with a constant sulphurous feeling in the background. The record's ten tracks alternate between different emotions, though dominated by a light and thoroughly enjoyable melancholy, without ever seeming scattered or derivative.

"On Neon Golden," Notwist explain, "the blues is a very important element. Just as important is the dub that surrounds a track like 'Pilot,' even if you can't strictly call it dub. Or 'Solitaire,' which was mixed after listening to an old Beatles song. The songs convey feelings, we always try to create moods without necessarily reproducing the technical particulars of specific musical styles in detail. We don't want to emulate." And that's what's so fascinating: the simple personality, precise but never excessive, that the German band has achieved.

Often minimal, the arrangements are built on samples and strings, horns and intriguing electronic beats. The impressions generated are more like whispers; there's no need felt for angry shouts or screams. From the catchy simplicity of "Pilot" to the relentless sensuality of a "This Room" that could recall post-"Kid A" Radiohead, it's impossible to single out any lesser moments: all ten tracks contain flashes of a spontaneous, genuine brilliance. "Pick Up The Phone" works its way venomously into the listener, packing in refined electronics and classical-leaning fragments, while the title track shows just how closely the German band listened to and reworked the purest soul of American country music. An enchanting synthesis, in short, of the music of the new century.

Then, a long silence, interrupted by a series of side projects. Until the fateful year of 2008. Ten years after Shrink, and six after Neon Golden, comes the seal, the milestone of a thoroughly personal way of interpreting electronics through rock.

Around this group, a beacon lighting up the German pop landscape and beyond (just ask Radiohead for confirmation), a whole host of other acts have sprung up, connected in various ways to the experience of the Acher brothers. Deluxe side projects (Lali Puna, the most famous) and labels that forged a style, suggested a perspective (Morr Music). Important things, in short, that restored lustre to German music, in some way updating the glories of kraut-rock.

It's therefore redundant to stress the anticipation surrounding The Devil You + Me (2008). And yet, the record seems locked into all-too-established patterns, played out on contrasts between electric folk and electronics, thus emphasizing the band's trademark sound, but largely abandoning the pop format that had defined its predecessor.

If the exception is the opening "Good Lies" (perhaps not by chance, the single), many of the tracks that follow revolve around electronic sketches carried by voice and guitar aiming for an atmospheric effect, bringing in hints of unusually dark tonalities. But to achieve this, the band draws heavily on sounds so overused this decade as to cross the line into outdated self-quotation, while the claimed darkness, unsupported by genuinely inspired vocal choices, soon turns into tedium.

Thus the studied minimalism slips into a void with no clear way to fill it ("Where In This World"), the faint rhythmic patterns become the fig leaf covering intentions that remain unfulfilled (the title track), and the guitar arpeggios leave a curious but thoroughly unpleasant sense of interchangeability between one track and the next. Even in the rare cases where the bpm shake off the languor, as in "Boneless" and "Gravity," there's no sense of added value compared to similar constructions already showcased in their day by Ms. John Soda or Lali Puna. A disappointment, in short, in every respect.

The 2014 comeback with Close To The Glass instead has a very strong impact on the listener. Both "Signals" and the title track are puzzles to decipher, wrapped in intricate electronic patterns that are hard to untangle. We're still talking about simple songs, yet this time it seems the band wanted to take a step forward. Markus Acher's voice remains as discreet and barely whispered as ever, fully exploiting its potential in the moments where it stands out most (the beautiful acoustic melodies of "Casino" and "Steppin' In," the straightforward pop structure of "Kong"). Compositionally the songs often excel (the lovely electro tangles of "Into Another Tune" and "From One Wrong Place To The Next"), reaching a possible peak with "Run Run Run," a ramshackle pop song battered by ghostly horns and mangled synths, a perfectly orchestrated orgy of sound.

The collective's experimental streak is found reinforced in the long kraut digression of "Lineri," a splendid tribute to the music of their homeland. Calm and flowing, the music drifts on until "They Follow Me," the ideal closing track for a Notwist record. The final track is, in fact, a sweet fable shot through with streaks of melancholy, with an instrumental coda in which electronic dust clears a path between violin notes and the odd beat. A perfect way to bring to a close an album that is anything but accommodating.

Less than a year later, the band released The Messier Objects on Alien Transistor, a collection of tracks gathered over the years in the course of a substantial parallel activity, devoted to composing for others, mostly tied to the worlds of theatre, film, television and radio. This amorphous nature also helps explain the heterogeneous character, both in style and in quality, of the sixteen "objects" plus one that make up the record's tracklist. There's no shortage of gems, to be fair: from the muffled opening of field recordings, inputs and guitars on the first "Object" to the melodic miniature of the sixth, via the trance-like feel of the tenth, all the way to the serene calm of the thirteenth and the synthetic sprawl of the seventeenth and final track. What's missing is a connecting thread to justify the choice of building a symphony in two movements essentially out of nothing, out of the forced union of individual miniatures, each with its own characteristics and its own context.

There are signs, then, of the start of a new path for Notwist, busy reinventing a style that has been massively influential, but that needed fresh stimuli. They've succeeded very well, with their usual originality and lightness of touch, combining past with future, without disowning an era that saw them triumph, and building themselves a thoroughly promising future.

In autumn 2016, Superheroes, Ghostvillains & Stuff was released, put out not only by Alien Transistor but also by Sub Pop. The album was recorded during the second of three live shows Notwist played in total at UT Connewitz in Leipzig in mid-December 2015, all of them strictly sold-out. The sounds that the members of Notwist explored with their various side projects, bolstered since 1997 by Martin Gretschmann's arrival in the band, are largely present in the first part of the live set, dedicated to four tracks from Close To The Glass (Sub Pop Records, 2014), in particular "They Follow Me", "Into Another Glass" and "Into Another Tune". What strikes you immediately about the recording is the lack of ambient sound, most likely the result of the instruments being captured mainly from the mixing desk and mixed in the studio afterwards. Nothing unusual for live recordings in general, but in the case of this album the sound seems to lose impact and immediacy. That complex, thunderous blend of electrified strings, beats, reverb and sampling that usually fills the ears of audiences at Notwist shows.

The band's indie pop-rock streak comes fully to the fore on "Kong", "Gloomy Planets" and "One With the Freaks", the latter in a particularly moving version (which also brings to mind the closing scene of Paolo Sorrentino's 2006 film "L'amico di famiglia", where it's used). Some songs exemplify the coexistence of pop and experimentation, such as "This Room", which follows one of the band's anthems, "Pick Up the Phone". An indie-rock bassline, dissonant synth inserts, pop vocal melody and a free-jazz instrumental coda characterize this version. The sustained indie-rock of "One Dark Love Poem" then breaks with the jazzy inserts — a track from the debut album, and the oldest in the setlist.

The final stretch of the album is pure enjoyment: a brisk 13-minute "Pilot", the sing-along of "Consequence" and the romantic closer "Gone Gone Gone". A guitar, a Rhodes, a few light touches of bass and drums, and a declaration before taking their leave: “Gone gone gone gone gone gone/ We will never let you go/ I will never let you go”.

Germany's Notwist resurface more than five years after their previous album, the unlucky "The Messier Object", with their eighth studio album, titled Vertigo Days (2021), arriving well past the 30-year mark in their career. A good fifteen of those years have been spent as a true institution of indietronica, thanks to an international, cross-genre following deservedly earned with two masterpieces such as Shrink and Neon Golden.

Handled with skill and restraint at every turn, Vertigo Days really does come across as the work of an institution. There's nothing new across these 14 tracks, no revolutions or risky experiments, but there's still plenty of vitality, thanks to intriguing excursions into each territory dear to the Acher brothers, now more than ever the band's gravitational center.

Dynamism is also helped by the choice to host guest vocalists and instrumentalists outside the band's lineup, such as Juana Molina, Zayaendo, Saya, Angel Bat Dawid and Ben LaMar Gay, who, alternating with Markus Acher's soft drawl, carry the album's mood into disparate exotic landscapes: a dazzling, winking Global South ("Al Sur"), a sinuous jazz jungle ("Into The Ice Age"), the mysterious Orient ("Ship"), some postcard-perfect Bohemian town ("Into Love Again").

Yet it's inevitably when Markus lets his voice, soft as wool, slide over the flowing guitars of "Loose Ends" that the album moves you most easily. Or when it basks in the joyous, jingling arrangements of "Sans Soleil". The wilder moments also work very well, like "Into Love/Stars", marked by shifting rhythms and incessant chiming bells, or "Exit Strategy To Myself", which contains the album's most venomous, cutting guitars.

Five years on from Vertigo Days, preceded a few months ago by the release of Magnificent Fall (2025, Alien Transistor), an interesting collection of rarities, remixes and salvaged tracks from various EPs, comes News From Planet Zombie, a new chapter marked by continuity, which this time draws on some of the band's more distant past. First of all, in the choice to record with the members of the live collective, involving the musicians in the songs' arranging process. A quick process, lasting just one week at Import Export Studios, the non-profit space in Munich the band has been tied to for years. And then, above all, in the return to a choral, electric dimension driven by reflections on an increasingly chaotic world, whose ugliness is likened to that of horror B-movies populated by hordes of the undead.

"X-Ray" — the album's first single — already highlighted this tendency, bringing back to our ears the energetic bursts of 12, just as the bittersweet pace of "The Turning", with its instrumental coda, echoes in structure and atmosphere the pop-rock of "Kong" from Close To The Glass. In this retracing of their own history, there's naturally room for the grace of their softest melodies, guided by Marcus's splendid voice ("Snow", "Who We Used To Be"), and for their taste for the intersection of pop and experimentation ("Propeller"). The album's novelty, however, lies in a double tribute: two covers that transport into the Notwist universe the Lovers' "How The Story Ends" and, above all, overturn and revitalize the bare-bones folk of Neil Young's "Red Sun".

Contributions by Marco Bercella ("The Devil You + Me"), Alessandro Biancalana ("Close To The Glass"), Matteo Meda ("The Messier Objects"), Maria Teresa Soldani ("Superheroes, Ghostvillains & Stuff"), Michele Corrado ("Vertigo Days") and Peppe Trotta ("News From Planet Zombie")

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