Hands down, those lyrics are mindbogglingly daft… but, hey, we’re talking about pop music here and not about the Novel Price in Literature. And as bassist Charles Cave admits: “I felt as though I couldn’t write about anything personal, so I would make up semi-comical stories that weren’t really important to anyone, not even me.” Well done, lad - lines like

“Could it tremble stars from moon light skies
Could it drag a tear from your cold eyes
I live on the right side, I sleep in the left
That’s why everything’s got to be love or death”
or
“The moonlight licked the face of danger
Innocence made us like soldiers
Untouchable and golden
The quilt of darkness dotted with our teardrops”

definitely do have a lot of comical potential, but that’s not the point. The point is: White Lies introduced fun to a genre that once started with bands like Joy Divison, Bauhaus, Modern English or This Mortal Coil, hence everyone’s playing this kind of darkish New Wave stuff was supposed to be dead serious about life, more preferably death and all the melodramatic rest.

Younger bands like Editors or Interpol picked up the pieces by simply copying the paradigm and graveness of that genre - but then this bunch from Ealing appeared on the scene with songs that sounded pretty much like Ultravox between 1979 and 1986, combined with a small grain of Joy Divisiousness and a little bit of U2’s pompousness - and the kids just loved it, which is something that the critics can’t stand at all. If one’s playing that kind of music, one should at least pretend to be serious about it!

But White Lies don’t care: Instead they’re writing good and catchy tunes, hence listening to their debut album “To lose My Life” is a nice and pleasant experience. Of course all comparisons to Joy Division are foredoomed: There are definitely no masterpieces like “Atmosphere”, “Love Will Tear Us Apart Again” or “Transmission” to be found on the White Lies’ debut album, and singer Harry McVeigh doesn’t sound like Ian Curtis at all (in fact he doesn’t even try to, which speaks in his favour), but “To Lose My Life”, “The Price of Love” and “Death” are really cool pop-songs, anyway. Unlike their competitors, White Lies have found a new and refreshing way to deal with the Post-Punk genre and are succesfully getting away with it - and if you don’t mind brummagem and pretentious lyrics, you will have a pretty good time with this album.

Admittedly this dreaded Eurovision Song Contest is largely a rather embarrassing event where cheesiness meets scurrility in enormous amounts - but from time to time even this gathering of musical failure confessions surprisingly gets hit by great songs: In 2004 it was Ukrainian singer Ruslana Lyzhicko with her early-Adam-Ant-meets-Xena-the-Warrior-Princess uptempo disco-hybrid “Wild Dances”, which was a really good dance track, and this year it’s a bunch or portuguese buskers called Flor-de-Lis with their beautiful folk ballad “Todas As Ruas Do Amor”. As my Portuguese is just as bad as my Ukrainian, I don’t really know what “Todas As Ruas Do Amor” is all about, but it really doesn’t matter: This catchy and enchanting song comes down like a warm shower of summer rain, and once percussion and accordion start giving the song its magical spin, you’re completely hooked by this tune’s superb musical quality.

Seems that this is simply the difference between a real musicians playing a real song with real instruments instead of those overall dressed-to-kill but surplus and shallow show-off ditties like Svetlana Loboda’s “Be My Valentine”, which I nevertheless have to be thankful for because never before has the name “Antichrisis” been mentioned that often on TV like last night when she performed this song: See the world’s biggest female Antichrisis-Fan here!

The Eurovision Song Contest Finale will take place on 16th May 2009, and I sincerely do hope that Flor-de-Lis are going to win, because even if they don’t mention Antichrisis anywhere in their song, “Todas As Ruas Do Amor” is by far the best track of the entire contest and therefore deserves international breakthrough.

I always had some kind of soft spot for Depeche Mode: I loved their first two albums “Speak & Spell” and “A Broken Frame”, but somehow I’ve lost my interest after “Music for the Masses”: though they still were a great band for singles, their later albums didn’t work for me any more.

But when I heard “Wrong” a few weeks ago I thought I’d give their new album “Sounds of the Universe” a chance because “Wrong” is a really stomping and pushing hit single that I didn’t expect from these old Basildon chaps any more… but to be honest: “Wrong” along with “Fragile Tension” are merely exceptional tracks because the rest of this album is just terribly boring. Depeche Mode got caught in the trap of many well-established bands: they end up playing run-to-the-mill music for a run-to-the-mill market because they simply dont’ have to achieve anything any more. U2 got out of that trap with exploring new musical shores on “No Line on the Horizon”, but that’s an attitude that Depeche Mode haven’t got discovered yet.

We went to the Musikmesse in Frankfurt on Friday the 3rd, and it was a really cool experience: the guys at the small Spectrasonics booth were very friendly and charming although they had to deal with a few hardware problems, and we also had much fun with the Stevie from Fender and Jens from Laboga and VGS. Seems that my favourite electric guitars are still those of Burns London and Paul Reed Smith, but I also fell in love with the very beautifully handcrafted instruments from Zerberus Guitars: fantastic guitars at a fantastic price. Nevertheless I was also impressed by Moog's new and innovative guitar with its awesome new full sustain mode, and if it comes to acoustic guitars I'm still a big fan of Takamine.

The guys from TC-Helicon also had some cool new hardware to present, and all in all we were more than busy trying to get a  glimpse on everything that caught our interest, but it's simply impossible to watch all in one day. When returning home in the evening, all we wished for were our beds and no more of those dreaded heavy metal guitar-solos!

I never liked The Libertines that much because they didn’t sound exciting to me: nothing new under the sun than just another hype. And The Babyshambles were nothing more than mere shambles - but suddenly Peter Doherty comes up with a really good album (Grace/Wastelands) and a brilliant single called “The Last of The English Roses”, which just proves the fact that this guy needs a band like a fish needs a bicycle. Good album, great single - keep it up!

Just stumbled across Glasvegas’ brilliant debut album: definitely one of this year’s best performances containing soon-to-be-classics like “Lonesome Swan”, “Daddy’s Gone” and “Geraldine”. Highly recommended to everyone being into The Jesus & Mary Chain’s first two albums, though Glasvegas’ lyrics are much better and their music does not contain as many 60’s resemblances as those of the Reids’. Great songs, intelligent lyrics and a lush sound the reminds of the good old C86-days.

Hey, U2’s new album really came as a surprise to me: they’ve tried to come up with something new and one can easily sense that they didn’t make the mistake of just repeating themselves, instead they’ve tried to widen their sound. OK, songs like “Get on Your Boots” and “Stand Up Comedy” are simply dispensable, but the rest of the album is  stupendously good and in some cases even exciting like “I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”, “Cedars of Lebanon”, “Fez” or “White as Snow”. All in all an album that I wouldn’t have expected after U2’s last mediocre releases “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” and “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”: Great sound, great production and a daring spirit - well done, guys.

Leider ein wirklich wichtiges Anliegen von Terre des Femmes. Weitere Informationen zu dem Thema findet ihr in diesem Artikel und natürlich auf der Website von Terre des Femmes.

A new Springsteen-album is out, and it received a lot of bad reviews already. To be honest, “Working On A Dream” is not one of Bruce’s strongest albums, especially if compared to last year’s masterpiece “Magic”. Springsteen himself said ‘Towards the end of recording “Magic”, excited by the return to pop production sounds, I continued writing. When my friend producer Brendan O’Brien heard the new songs, he said, ‘Let’s keep going.’ All the songs were written quickly, we usually used one of our first few takes, and we all had a blast making this one from beginning to end.” I think this statement explains the main problem of “Working On A Dream”: Whereas “Magic” contained the blend selection of songs, the leftovers of those sessions found their way on “Working on a Dream” - but even second quality Springsteen-songs can be much better than anything else in today‘s rock music.

So everyone not being a retarded colour-blind 80ies-devotee will agree that the cheesy album cover is definitely one of the worst that any half-witted artwork designer could ever come up with - but who cares? It‘s the music that matters, not the album cover and if anyone is to blame, than it‘s the designer and not Mr. Springsteen.

But after the visual drawback let‘s turn to the audible side:

The album opens with “Outlaw Pete”: a very good choice, as this song is a perfect mixture of Springsteen’s early days (say “Greetings from Asbury Park” and “The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle”-era) and his later, more modern sound. Very epic, very catchy - a perfect opener.

I’m sure that the next track “My Lucky Day” will work just fine when performed live: hard stomping good times Rock ‘n’ Roll - but we all know that Bruce can do much better than that. To me it sounds a bit like an outtake of his “Human Touch” and “Lucky Town”-era.

“Working On A Dream” is the album’s single, and it’s a good but also bland pop song. I’m sure that everybody would like this track if it would have appeared for example on the next Tom Petty-album… but as aforesaid: Bruce can do so much better than that. A little bit disappointing if you ask me.

“Queen Of The Supermarket” has received many spiteful comments by rock critics so far - but come on: I know those sophisticated blokes spend their lifes in the hippest bars with the in-crowd and love to make clever remarks about what they think is relevant in life… but there are real people in the real world who have to work hard for their living, and these people can’t afford to go to sushi bars or Starbuck’s, instead they’re having a cheap pint in the next pub and they actually have to go shopping in supermarkets - and maybe some ordinary customer there might fall in love with a queen of the supermarket even if a company cap covers her hair: nothing wrong with that. So everybody accusing Springsteen for this song’s lyrics should ask himselt if he might have become a bit too posh to remember what real life is all about - and maybe it’s Bruce’s big credit that despite being a rock star he can still remember what it’s like to be part of the common people. Musically it’s one of the best songs on the album, exuding the E Street Band’s warm and brilliant cinematic sound all over the place.

“What Love Can Do” is a very haunting and catchy piece of music - but as I watched the sessions video contained on the deluxe version of this CD where Bruce played an acoustic version of this song to his fellow musicians, I realised that “What Love Can Do” would have been a much more intense song if it would have been recorded exactly that way: just plain vanilla with Bruce’s voice and his acoustic guitar. Guess “What Love Can Do” would have been a good job for a producer like Rick Rubin, whereas Brendan O’Brien’s production fails to put the song in the right spot here.

I’ve never been much of a Beach Boys fan, hence “This Life” doesn’t catch my attention with all it’s vocal references to the Californian surf gang. Nice piece of work for proving that the E Street Band is capable of playing a song that sounds pretty much like the Beach Boys, but nothing more.

“Good Eye” is a raw blues track that would have made a perfect song for the White Stripes, but definitely not for the E Street Band: Their sound’s too perfect, too big and too technicolour-like to perform a piece of mangy black & white low-fi Delta Blues like this, hence this song just silts up as it goes along.

Springsteen has always been a good C&W-singer, and so “Tomorrow Never Knows” (not to be confused with the great Beatles-track of the same name) is a very nice and sweet C&W-ballad… maybe a bit too nice and neat, but what the heck: the truckers will love it anyway.

“Life Itself” is definitely an album highlight: dedicated to the late Danny Federici, this track shows a dark and thoughtful Springsteen, both awesome and touching: Bruce at his best.

“Kingdom Of Days” seems like a bit of self-plagiarism to me: Springsteen quotes himself and in spite of the song’s beautiful string arrangement it still sounds like a Springsteen tribute band trying to be the real thing - not my cup of tea.

“Surprise Surprise” sure is a surprise to me: innocent and simple birthday lyrics disguised by a song that would have made both The Byrds and The Jam proud if they’d have written it. Despite its naive lyrics another great track that in my opinion would have made a much better single than “Working On A Dream”. And why shouldn’t anyone be allowed to write a better birthday song than boring old “Happy Birthday To You”?

Funny enough, the most outstanding tracks of this album are to be found at the end. “The Last Carnival” goes so deep that it simply sends shivers down my spine: A pure and fervent acoustic ballad with such a beautiful and dreamlike backing choir that it leaves the listener completely flabbergasted. Again Springsteen proves that he’s often best when exploring his more contemplative side… and the same goes for the album’s bonus track “The Wrestler”: Even darker and more abandoned than “The Last Carnival”; there’s no light at the end of this song’s tunnel. Another soundtrack by Bruce that’s almost as good as “Dead Man Walking”: simply awesome!

So what have we here? “Working On A Dream” is definitily not as good as “Magic” was - but on the other hand it’s not as bad as many critics insist. Sure there are some songs on this album that wouldn’t necessarily have to be released, but there are also tracks like “Life Itself”, “The Last Carnival” or “Outlaw Pete” which are simply outstanding and evidencing that Springsteen’s still one of the best song wrighters in today’s rock music. So all in all I’m a very satisfied customer, knowing that no artist is capable of releasing a masterpiece like “Magic” every year… Good job, Bruce - and I can’t wait to see you live in Germany in July!

Last year was definitely a good year for softsynth-aficionados like me: first we had G-Force's significant update to their famous M-Tron called M-Tron Pro, which offers much more sounds and tweaking possibilities than one could have ever expected from a Mellotron-replica, then came Spectrasonics with their groundbreaking Omnisphere (which will receive another important update on January 26th with more than 2000 new patches - and don't ask me when I'll ever find the time to check them all out!), and finally in December Camel Audio released their long awaited sample manipulation synthesizer Alchemy, which I had the chance to work with during the last two weeks.

First I should confess that building sounds from scratch isn't exactly my cup of tea: I love to have a proper library of inspiring sounds that I can tweak and work with, and in these terms Alchemy is simply gorgeous even if not as packed and well-assorted as Omnisphere, but then Alchemy doesn't require 40 GB of free space on your hard drive like Omnisphere does, instead it just asks for reasonable 2 GB.

Alchemy is equiped with over 300 presets sorted in categories like Arpeggiated, Bass, Brass, Drums, Guitars, Keys, Leads, Loops, Mallets, Organs, Pads, Sound Effects, Soundscapes, Strings, Synth, Vocals and Woodwinds, but don't expect any "traditional" sounds: that's definitely not what Alchemy is all about, moreover it aims to create new and outstanding sounds - no wonder, because it allows you to tweak and manipulate every aspect of any given sound, and best of all it also allows you to import your own audio files and put them through its additive, spectral or granular grinder... only the sky is the limit of what you can do to any sound snippet loitering on your hard drive! To find out more about Alchemy's numerous possibilities take a look at Camel Audio's tutorial videos here.

I was most impressed by Alchemy's arpeggiated sounds, its drums, pads, loops and strings: these sounds are so unique and inspiring that I could hardly stop myself from fiddling about with them for hours and hours - really great stuff! I only wished the guys at Camel Audio would have equiped Alchemy with more than just 10 drum sets, because each of them is a case of sui generis and high musical quality.

Alchemy's sound effects and soundscapes on the other hand are the categories that I won't have much use for, but then it's a bit unfair to judge strange sounds like these after I've worked my way through Omnisphere's sound library just a few weeks ago: Sure Alchemy's soundscapes and sound effects do sound interesting and vivid, and there's also a lot of morphing going on, but I think Omnisphere remains simply unexcelled concerning weird and eerie atmospheres and sounds - but keep in mind that someone else might see (or hear) things different, because these categories are of much more use for composers & producers of movie scores and computer game tracks than for your average and humble musician.

All in all Alchemy is an extraordinary and wonderful softsynth offering myriads of editing possibilities that even Omnisphere can't provide. It works like a charm, contains hundreds of unique and inspiring sounds, is expandable (CamelAudio are currently offering 2 expansion sets on their website and there will be more to come) and put up for sale at more than reasonable price. It only took me just one hour until I had to realise that Alchemy will become one of my favourite softsynths! The only problem is that after working with Alchemy, most of my other software synthesizers do sound so bloody boooooring...