It was one of the very first sunny spring days this year when I first listened to Leichtmetall’s “Wir sind Blumen”. You know, one of those certain moments in year when you get overjoyed ’cause the weather’s so nice and you walk down the street with ease and confidence and the faces of people passing by look different, too?
At least that’s how I perceive this time of year. Leichtmetall made the soundtrack to quite a few of my sunday afternoons, initially of course because I was ought to write something about their album, but very soon I forgot about the task and just drifted away with the music.
Yeah of course, one might say, this is because it makes such a nice analogy to the album’s title “Wir sind Blumen” – “We are flowers”. And it does to a certain extent. And yet, if you dip a little deeper into the record there’s more to it than just a summerly association. For one there’s this remarkable openness that Leichtmetall demonstrate with their music and their way of dealing with everyday occurrences. And I’m just fond of people who love people and life with all their facets and complexities and who have a sense for alleged trifles. Take for example “Der große Tag” (“The big day”), where it says in the chorus: ‘Today is my day’. What a familiar feeling. And Leichmetall dig life that’s for sure.
Luckily neither the title track “wir sind blumen” nor any of the other songs slip off into (be it pure or coy) naivety. Neither should their “we” be understood as solely self-reflexive. It’s rather that the two of them look at life from an much too often neglected angle. For the course of the album all those small things that usually are forgotten
or disregarded in everyday life become a whole without claiming totality.
Leichtmetall achieve all that with few words and very basic imagery. Their musical appliances are reduced, almost sparse, but very classic. And above all they are unpretentious. Maybe even “dilettantish” in a Tracey Horn kind of way: without the melancholic severity that is inherent to her music and time but with the same feeling of being independent from contemporary precepts.

Fee Magdanz