The Notwist's last album, Neon Golden,
was an album disillusioned with relationships, crafted mainly
for long lonely nights (see song titles like "One Step Inside
Doesn't Mean You Understand"). It was only on tracks like
"One With The Freaks" and "Consequence", that
the band opened their arms, revealing their fondness for simple,
tender and touching rumination pieces. The Devil, You + Me, on
the other hand, revels in that sound, from the moment "Good
Lies" bursts out the door with pensively driving waves of
sound that paint a picture of the band crouched over their instruments,
pouring all their memories of loved ones, instinctual intimacy
and traces of emotion into each heavenly movement.
But for all it's romantic gestures and
love-centric gestures, The Devil, You + Me is still best personified
by it's album cover: A lone man standing at the edge of a forest,
ankle deep in a body of water teeming with birds and wildlife.
The narrator of Neon Golden has made it out of the dank labyrinth
of tracks like "Trashing Days" and "Neon Golden",
only to emerge in an endless sea. Beauty thrives much more in
this place, but there's no escaping the fact that he's still a
long ways from home. It's that tension between inescapable sadness
and beauty that may make The Devil, You + Me every bit as good
as it's predecessor, despite it's lack of focus.
By lack of focus, I'm referring to way
in which the sequencing of the album let's down it's powerful
individual moments, of which there are many, might I add. Besides
the aforementioned opening track, "Gloomy Planets" comes
to mind; a wistful acoustic track, eventually fueled by Theremin
harmonies and a gradually unfolding bridge that uses unidentifiable
electronics and noise to gently propel it forward. The title track
uses similar techniques and sounds, but does so even more delicately,
swaying and slinking at a slower tempo. "Handson Us"
and "On Planet Off" move through darker textures like
clockwork, making up for the similar early album attempts (and
failures) of "Where In This World" and "Alphabet".
There’s such a consistently high
quality and quantity of individual moments, but unlike Neon Golden,
which had a track order that lent each track a distinct identity
and immediacy, even countless repeat listens will render The Devil,
You + Me as not much more than a collection of tracks. This is
because the band seems to put so much into each one of these tracks,
filling them to the top with hooks, life-affirming spirituality
and dense textures, that they seem to lose regard for cohesion,
preferring to just milk each individual moment for all it's worth.
It's one of those rare albums that is actually so good, it's hard
to tell at first. But Neon Golden needed time and so will this
one. Just think of it as The Notwist's Aladdin Sane to their Ziggy
Stardust, and this treasure trove of perfect electronic pop songs
will reveal itself soon enough. (Aron Fischer)
For
fans of: The Postal Service, Bjork, Dntel
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