Naked Lunch

“the bells they were ringing with a beautiful sound / a new day rising a way that we found / we’re old and settled but we still believe / if we don’t march together we die alone” — from the song, this atom heart of ours
A favorite stylistic device used for writing lyrics such as these is to simply update the previous album in the hope that no one will remember any previous attempts to take unrestrained superlatives to undreamed of heights . In the worst case, while still laced with overtones of truth and played by more or less eloquent musicians, such an album turns out to be a hard-fought, mechanical transcription of an artistic vision. But have no fear here, as there is nothing to update from Songs for the Exhausted, Naked Lunch’s previous album released in 2004. There is nothing to take back, nothing really – from any perspective – to adopt, aside from noting that there have not been many albums during the last three years that have kept so well and still have so much to give. With Songs for the Exhausted, Naked Lunch has reached a new level as a band – one from which they can survey and assess their work up to this point, and one from which they can continue to make music, both freer and differently than before.
With this atom heart of ours, the title song and opener of the band’s new album, you can hear their new music and Naked Lunch’s continued climb. If the word was not so pompous, one could call the title song an overture of coming joy –a great joy! Within these first three minutes, we are given an idea of what is waiting for us: pop music that embraces the world, fearlessly and passionately displayed with an unconditional openness that seems freshly ripped out if a euphoric, still-beating heart, in which love – the wonder remedy – beats ten times faster, with its ever-strengthening motor, finally completely unfolding its healing effects. Giant hymns and simultaneously fragile emotions, this is music that calls for a sincere embrace without any false solidarity.
„we built this city with our bare hands / where every stone belongs to us / come over now it’s overwhelming / ‘cause we walk hand in hand now / yes, we walk hand in hand“
-------from the first single, mititary of the heart Finally, someone asks the right question! Contrary to the pronouncement of one of the sappiest songs in history, it is guaranteed that rock n’ roll can build no city, correctly understood, on a damn imposing, populated labyrinth of excess value, and still more importantly understood, revolutions lasting three minutes (or, in this case, for this an eternal, magical night). Misunderstood, it reaches god-awful levels, in which the innocent thrill seeker is reduced to a bumbling consumer-idiot, dully pounding out on offbeats, “we don’t need entertainment / we entertain ourselves.”
Naked Lunch, including Oliver Welter, Herwig Zamernik and Stefan Deisenberger have had their share of rock n’ roll. They have lived, felt, loved, endured, and been beaten down, with naked hands on all fours, arriving at a still more beautiful place, draped with medals – or are they scars? – that could have been lost by small national dignitaries of this world. Naked Lunch understands exactly how this works in town full of dogs, one of the most remarkable songs of their astounding ten song album. You will feel that your bark is your own personal tinitus. “gimmie hope gimmie fear / gimmie love and despair / gimmie loads of your drug / and a reasonable fuck / your burden and your weight / gimmie all that I can take.”
They now also know another beautiful place. Get to know it better. Study it. Naked Lunch sings about it, and not only on this new album. We call it luck, we call it freedom (and not only inner freedom). We even call it love. But once it is given out, we want to defend it against a fear of nothingness or rage. Those who collapse upon themselves and dissolve into nothing if one builds up a suggestive paranoia machine, because they – rightly – take themselves as endangered and fragile. In this sense, the album is also political to the point at which it goes no further and often needs only one sentence such as this one from colors to tell exactly where we stand: “I hope I never get to be this man of bitter state you’re in.” The classic double relationship. Children are not the only way out of the dilemma of hardening, the drawing up of a personal protective shield against the accepted maddening bustle on this planet. If you agree, move forward and do not stand still – why the fuck not? Naked Lunch understands how it feels to be a refugee and the fragile core of these things. Naturally, they have their own problems, just as we all do. But their strategy by all things is a different one: parting, opening, entering, arriving…remaining in movement.
military of the heart, the second song on the album and the first single, compels one go down on bended knee. The Beatles/Lennon DNA of songwriter Oliver Welter combines itself with a thousand other things to create a fantastical wonder. A song to which one, entirely without ecstasy, can imagine his or herself at a blessed one-woman or one-man rave. It will make would-be fierce hardcore punks engage in spontaneous cuddle pits. This is a song, that clearly increases the operating temperature between people trapped in still cooled social situations.
With this atom heart of ours, Naked Lunch has claimed its place of honor once and for all in that part of the canon of contemporary pop that has eschewed straight-forward structures in an attempt to cultivate mass appeal. Instead, Naked Lunch focuses its energy and intelligence over ten wonderful songs, resulting in a rich, precise structure of sounds and songs based on a fertile musical logic that never becomes strained. Their wildness flows in the creation of music from an often overwhelming beauty. All of this takes work. “Work hurts,” says Oliver. But this work has been worth it. In a just world, this atom heart of ours would propel Naked Lunch into one of the first violins of heaven’s orchestra, whereby they could oversee the entire pop universe. By any means necessary. But in principle it does not even matter what happens to this album. What is important is that it exists. It is an album that defies categorization, leaving you changed after listening to the last tones of in the end. It is rich, touching and deeply moving. It may give some the impulse to say things that they should have said long ago, such as the searching for words for a long-overdue declaration of love, but as yet went unsaid on account of fear.
“my arms will hold you in the end / you will forgive me in the end / my love will find you in the end”.