On their first album Everything Is True, Berlin four-piece THE INNITS delighted us with a charming yet gruff indie sound, drawing on rough guitar lines and vocal harmonies. Their second long-player, entitled On The Fence, maintains a continuity as far as the various subgenres, the sound aesthetics and the playing of the debut album are concerned, yet succeeds in refining them even further. The record’s immediacy equals that of a live performance and surprises us with its varying degrees of musical density. The songs oscillate between scarce and opulent instrumentation, thus mirroring the impulsive and wayward lyrics. Here and there, clarinets, saxophones and cellos make an apparition, just to give way to psychedelic sixties harmonies or to the evocation of a dance band in glitter suits. The result are 13 timeless tracks, which –despite said variety– sound as if they had a common origin. Eclecticism is something else.If you were to name the red thread of the album, that would have to be its nostalgic folk atmosphere. Continuously, a soft spot for the simple, clearly structured song shines through: no frills and not a note too many. Mek Obaam –singer, songwriter, drummer and frontman of THE INNITS– writes lyrics finding their source in the vast lands between everyday life and apocalypse. Often, they are seemingly naive reflections, yet a closer look reveals something like a second, hidden layer beneath, far less innocent than the surface. In the title track, he describes with a great deal of self-mockery how his life inevitably seems to be caught between two stools, and how the multitude of options it confronts him with are both a blessing and a curse. Other songs offer an estranged and bewildered look on the everyday goings-on, such as the fanciful names young Berlin parents give their children (‘Nothing to write home about’), or narcissictic politicians caught in their own void rhetorics and ever so greedy for power (‘Hearts and Minds’). His view is an external one and could not be further away from being self-righteous. He is, however, self-aware to a very high degree – aware in particular of the things he does not want to be or have or the things that he is not capable of (‘What I’m not’).Even if the song ‘Answers Now Please’ impressively describes the malaise of getting old, it spares us any self-pity. The most wonderful tenderness of the young century shines through in the penultimate song of the album: ‘Cabin Song’ is THE INNITS playing a lullaby to themselves. The track was born in a house hidden away in the depths of the Swedish forests, which was where half of the album was recorded. The attentive listener will hear the wind in the background and the sound of wood burning in the fireplace.Songwriter, singer and drummer Mek Obaam, who made his name as a sideman for Schneider TM and Barbara Morgenstern, as the drummer of The Boggs from NYC and through his current involvement with UK band Moon Unit, also as a drummer, has created an album which simply is a sparkling diamond.
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