Live: Nils Frevert - Pseudopoesie

In the organizer's words:

Niels Frevert's new album is called Pseudopoesie, and apart from how hallucinogenic this word looks, it is of course remarkable that he, Frevert, hero of all song poets in the German language, calls his seventh and once again surprising album Pseodopoesie. Is that coquetry or is he having a crisis? And why, after his successful pre-Covid album Putzlicht, has he come out with such a hammer again? Questions to which we probably won't get any satisfactory answers, because N. Frevert is elusive.

"I sing in a cage where the algorithm doesn't work"

'Stranger in the world'

It starts with the categorization. Frevert's colleagues are all easy to grasp. There's Jochen, the intellectual. Thees, the buddy type. Sven, the romantic with the novels, and Gisbert, the one from the shared kitchen of the heart. Niels, however, is vague. He was always the one who didn't really belong anywhere. A loner, mysterious and somewhat unapproachable. A flâneur who emerges from obscurity every few years with two handfuls of songs, causes rapture and disappears again into the anonymity of the big city where he finds his stories. A master of proud melancholy, where words become hooks like disposable lighter flames and every song takes a look at the world, a moment or a phrase that you will never forget. Too fine for format radio, too confusing for the algorithm.

The break came with the album Putzlicht, released in 2019. With this album, Frevert virtually reinvented himself after a five-year break, shedding the corset of the singer-songwriter. Suddenly everything was bigger and punchier, as if The War On Drugs had stormed his writing studio. Pseudopoesie picks up where it left off and goes even further - also thanks to the new Frevert producer Tim Tautorat (Faber, Provinz, Tristan Brusch).

"The black on your wrist, is that kohl?"

'Washbasin rim'

The best example of the transformation is 'Weite Landschaft', the opener and first single. It begins like a Frevert song from the past, one of those upright ballads that despair of love - then it tips over, falls to its feet and runs off. 'Fremd in der Welt' (Frevert about Frevert?) is a hit, 'Waschbeckenrand' is a miniature with the kind of universal impact that only Frevert can write, the stunning 'Träume hören nicht auf bei Tagesanbruch' is a radiohead elegy to longing, the "Klappern von Geschirr" is the sequel to 'Wind in deinem Haar' by Putzlicht. More than ever, his gaze is directed at what goes on behind the windows of the city apartments in which many of his stories are set - these highly condensed snapshots that contain whole lives. Frevert's songs do not encourage people to persevere, offer no consolation and give no advice. They gently put their finger on the wound where dreams wither and hearts harden, gently push you to the door and leave you standing there with the key in your hand. This is great, at times almost painfully beautiful pop music that takes life and people seriously, peels the drama of our existence out of the everyday and, more recently, always has a way out: a radical new beginning, an escape into a new life, as an idea ...

new life, as an idea ...

But why the perhaps once again best Niels Frevert album of all time is called Pseudopoesie of all things is one of those Frevert questions with which we can twist ourselves into a pigtail. Is it the third part of a P trilogy consisting of the albums Paradies der gefälschten Dinge, Putzlicht and Pseudopoesie? Does the pseudo refer to the

the poet's doubts about his texts? Or is it a kind of meta middle finger to the mainstream? Either way, this intrinsically interesting word seems somewhat out of place on this album, but in no way detracts from its enjoyment.

"The view is wide and the longing great /

And every morning a new attempt"

'Dreams don't stop at dawn'

He is "actually also a normal new album guy every three and a half years", he says himself. Unless there's a major crisis, then it can take half a decade. Pseudopoesie was released 3.5 years after its predecessor - a hint. Frevert also wanted to get back on tour as quickly as possible. And his new producer Tim Tautorat is on his toes - he doesn't waste any time, loves taking risks and simply plays string arrangements himself. As a result, Pseudopoesie was produced in just six weeks - the shortest album production phase since Frevert's 1997 debut.

He recorded the ten new songs with the live line-up of Putzlicht - the first time that his band has stayed together completely between two albums. Niels Frevert seems to have arrived: between the chairs, on the outer orbit or simply on the way to the eternal onward journey. Try to grab hold of him and he lets go, does a two-and-a-half somersault under the circus dome without a net, lands in his glittery leotard, sings your heart out and is gone again.

Tino Hanekamp

More info:

www.nielsfrevert.net

www.instagram.com/niels_frevert

en-de.facebook.com/nielsfrevert/

Support: tba

Price information:

Admission: 23,- VVK (plus fees at Tix for Gigs) / tba,- B.O.