KETTCAR

In the organizer's words:

KETTCAR - Good mood unfairly distributed (Release: 05.04.2024)

This record has the power to ask how hope, even utopia, can still be preserved today - without telling yourself some half-baked crap. It looks outwards as well as inwards. And keeps looking where others have long since begun to blink. A multi-layered album that proves that nuances and despair can deliver hits.

Embracing an old friend after a long time. Heart palpitations and all. But also a bit of uncertainty. You get over it by reassuring each other that everything is still the same. It's business as usual, here's to the good times, play it again.

The return of Kettcar in spring 2024 also spreads warmth and adrenaline, but it feels completely different. Seven years after their last album "Ich vs. Wir", nothing seems to be the same anymore. Pandemic, lateral thinkers, war, more war, shit.

"Before the last hope fades A Bengalo in the night Before the darkness finds you"

("6th hour for me too")

No pats on the back, no you-know-what. "Gute Laune ungerecht verteilt", the Hamburg band's sixth album, is so stirring precisely because it doesn't dwell on pleasant reunion folklore. Kettcar keep in touch with the here and now, in touch with us. The first song to appear was "München", a musical thunderstorm and an empathic tale about everyday racism, about this perfidious "No, I meant where you actually come from!". The piece packs this so pointedly into lines that punk record music editors toss and turn in their sleep at night and ask, how did he do that? - if this ...But-Alive hyperlink is allowed. Greetings to all nerds.

Be that as it may... He, in this case, is bassist Reimer Bustorff. He also writes songs for Kettcar and has grown noticeably as a songwriter over the years. And that naturally has a feedback channel: "Look, when Reimer comes up with a big song like 'München'," grins singer, guitarist and main songwriter Marcus Wiebusch, "then I just have to follow suit. Of course that fires me up. When you have two songwriters in the band, that adds to the whole dynamic."

"And not everyone in Hamburg wants to go to The Lion King"

("Shopping in times of war")

"Gute Laune ungerecht verteilt" actually contains the band's best lyrics. No bullshit, no info-sheet bigmouthing, just listen to "A letter from my 20-year-old self (Every ideal is a judge)". What's wrong with Wiebusch, please? Nobody can actually write lyrics that intense.

Or "Kanye in Bayreuth", where they take on the charged term "cancel culture". Who do you still want to listen to, who don't? Where do you look, where do you look away? Translating such a complex topic into music and sounding exciting instead of exhausting... nobody teaches you that at the pop academy. But it works here.

In general, the record always manages to turn nuances and nuances into hits. Hits that hit you deeper than any slogans.

But it's also nice how the explosiveness of the record never overwhelms you. This is probably because the Kettcar humor always breaks through in a surprising way. Because no drama is exempt from the justified question of how Darth Vader brushes his teeth. Or even the title of the enchanting play, which tells of the takeover of the parcel carriers and nurses. It's called "Doug & Florence" - and connects Florence Nightingale with Doug Heffernan from "King Of Queens" in a yearning class utopia.

"Sneakers as white as aspirin"

("Blue Lagoon, 9:45 p.m.")

But above all, "Good Mood Unfairly Distributed" makes music. And it seems more multi-layered than before. You can feel how the band not only wanted to allow more, but also did so. The opener "Auch für mich 6. Stunde" with its Billy Joel in a minor key feel is a promise that the remaining tracks make full use of. Trumpet movements, a babababababa chorus, intimate acoustic moments and associations with acts such as The National, Idles, Sufjan Stevens, War On Drugs and, yes, The Beatles.

Kettcar is simply a band, not a soundscape for good lyrics. Kettcar lives from the great skills of guitarist Erik Langer, as well as Christian Hake (drums) and Lars Wiebusch (keyboards).

The result is a record whose great musicality is actually on a par with the power of the lyrics.

In 2024, Kettcar are looking for an artistic response to times that are too demanding - without getting caught up in simple truths.

Listening to them is more than just honey on the wounds.

Text: Linus Volkmann

Price information:

50.55 € (incl. fees)