The Notwist
News from Planet Zombie
Morr Music
The News from Planet Zombie isn’t all bad. Years, even decades, removed from the wistful restraint of Neon Golden, by any measure a classic confluence of glitchy austerity, begrudgingly warm electronica, and art-rock calm, nervy and noisy new guitar-centric tracks like the skittering, driving “X-Ray” and “The Turning” make pulses race, reflecting the anxiety and tumult of the current state of things. It’s enough to set The Notwist’s “Teeth” on edge.
And yet, for all its underlying tension and paranoia, the brooding “Teeth” — the opening sci-fi gambit on News from Planet Zombie — drifts along in a soothing, softly rolling reverie, low saxophone bleat and burnished horns, glassy trill, a shift from tribal to softly conventional drumming, gently plucked notes, and starry ambience guiding the way. An echoing mantra that’s hardly comforting, “We’ll find the buildings / the buildings keep us safe” is repeated, fading away but suggesting it’s time to shelter-in-place. The slight cut of dissonance bleeding through what is otherwise a dreamy menagerie isn’t helping.
It’s as if Tortoise visited Germany to share their post-rock intelligence with The Notwist but instead found Sufjan Stevens collaborating with Califone on the acoustically rendered experimental folk of “Projectors,” “Like This River,” and “Who We Used to Be” — all reflective meditations made more poignant by clarinet, piano, and other instrumental ephemera. Generous of spirit, with a heart full of humanity, The Notwist does battle with the forces of fearful misery and oppressive cynicism with an expanded lineup fleshing out the artful designs of Micha and Markus Acher and Cico Beck. Even “The Turning” awakens from a trance of angsty strum to pry open painted-shut windows and let in rays of hopeful sunshine. That upbeat energy lifts “Silver Lanes,” too, with mighty grunge-gazing riffs. Those post-hardcore urges are harder to resist than ever it seems.
Cleverly arranging a broad palette of beautiful, carefully manicured sounds and imbuing them with bittersweet longing is what makes albums by The Notwist so original and instantly recognizable, but on News from Planet Zombie they surprise with a pair of covers, giving Neil Young’s “Red Sun” an arresting, lapping chamber-pop makeover and cycling through Lovers’ “How the Story Ends” with oscillating urgency.
Please, don’t kill these inventively melodic messengers.
