If there’s one failure I blame Gen X and the Millennial Gen for, it’s that they collectively allowed fascism to return to the forefront of discourse. No matter which country you look at, there’s a resurgence of militarism, chauvinist sabre rattling, a desire for ‘strongmen’-type leaders and unwarranted xenophobia. Social media decided within the blink of an eye to just abandon all common sense of ethical procedure after Elon Musk turned Twitter into right wing propaganda arm, so the tone online is also, pardon my French, utter dogshit! Each election becomes a heart-attack jog that could lead to the dissolution of a country; irresponsible oligarchs see a chance of additional wealth within power grabs from far right figures that indulge in mutual sponsorship.
And, as far as I can tell, this doesn’t bother a lot of people. Everyone hates Kanye for his harmful tweets – until he shows up somewhere in person, and everyone films him for their Insta stories, heaping adoration upon him. Turn back the clock to the time before the lockdown, during Trump’s first presidency, and worldwide you’d see mass protest, mainstream media ridicule of executive seppuku politics and confrontational debates in Facebook comment sections. Where’s all this fire now, that things look more dire than they ever have before?
Well, it’s not erupting on Tocotronic‘s new album, Golden Years. On their 14th album, the legendary Hamburgian band returns to its original line-up as a trio (late era addition Rick McPhail is absent due to personal – and health – reasons), continuing into their 32nd year of existence. Starting out with a series of four consecutive albums of clever, grunge influenced indie rock, Tocotronic were first billed “the German Nirvana”, before developing towards a more expensive sound on the postmodern K.O.O.K. From there, the band became more exploratory and managed to breach the difficult transition both into the German mainstream and international market. With the self-titled White Album – also their best – the band would from then on often be labeled “the German Radiohead”, but in hindsight their releases of that era have more in common with Blur’s then contemporaneous output; the self-titled and 13. This would also mark the moment when McPhail officially joined, allowing the band to explore elaborate guitar structures on record and in concert.
From then on, Tocotronic had a spectacular run of intelligent, varied releases: the almost Television-adjacent guitar textures of Pure Vernunft dard niemals siegen, the punk-infused Kapitulation and the Creation Records guitar walls of Schall und Wahn are all among the best music Germany ever had to offer! Coupled with a strong, hard left political stance, the group expressed a moral centre of the then contemporary German pop culture.
This is where things started to get rocky. 2013’s overlong Wie wir leben wollen seemed like a midlife crisis of singer-songwriter cliches. The untitled Red Album was a slight return to form, with its elaborate sophisti-pop and clever compositions. The autobiographical follow up Die Unendlichkeit, charting vocalist Dirk von Lowtzow’s life through elaborate vignettes, divided fans, but seven years later it’s a really enjoyable (if somewhat naive) modern pop record. This can’t be said of 2022’s Nie wieder Krieg, which was incredibly mid in tone and posture, resulting in moderately exciting pop-tunes and somewhat superfluous rockers, adding a stilted theatricality that didn’t suit the group at all.
In the decade that spanned that era, Tocotronic drifted towards the same middle-aged melancholia that has entrapped The National in progressively more forgettable records – even if the sound was heavy, the spirit slowly left. Could the future allow them to bravely break through this trend, finding new lifeblood and uncharted territory?
The lazier critics will look at Golden Years as a welcome chance to expand on Bowie’s song off Station to Station – somehow attempting to bridge the Thin White Duke with the trio’s current iteration – when the more accurate pointer should be the name of their longterm label, L’Age D’or. So a self-reference as album title – why not, this could hint at reflection and a desire to reconfigure the recent past. Sadly, Golden Years is a shockingly uninspiring, drab affair, lacking the sonic bite or intellectual gravitas even Tocotronic’s least interesting works still offered in spades.
The usually clever hidden references (such as Die Unendlichkeit‘s song title “Bis uns das Licht vertreibt”, possibly an ironic reference to the controversial black metal album Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, which likely crossed von Lowtzow’s path around the time of his life this song is meant to capture) are now overwhelmingly apparent. One example is “Wie ich mir selbst entkam”, which clumsily translates and adapts parts of Big Thief’s refrain to “Masterpiece”. “Bleib am Leben” barges with its distorted guitars, but has no emotional gravitas behind its life affirming message, while “Ein Rockstar stirbt zum zweiten Mal” comes across like a parody of the Schall und Wahn era. The Western-homage “Niedrig” might be the least of these tracks, dragging itself across a backdrop of quiet drone textures without emotional impact.
When the songs don’t feel clumsy, they come across as painfully tame. Opener “Der Tod ist nur ein Traum” has the same tuneless flow of The National’s kitschy First Two Pages of Frankenstein. Title track “Golden Years” is a singer-songwriter style banality, and one of von Lowtzow’s worst vocal performances, as he sounds like a tired impersonator. “Denn sie wissen, was sie tun” even becomes politically problematic, when over a flaccid pop-rock tune, von Lowtzow addresses right wing polemics with the strangely toothless call for “love as opposition”. Deeply ingrained within leftist activism – playing free shows in autonomous or occupied spaces and raising funds for anti-fascist organisations – this stance seems like an admission of defeat, at a point when it seems all the more important to strongly oppose destructive forces. In the band’s defence, their recent interviews show a more confrontative and direct stance, but shouldn’t this clear position necessitate a hymn that impacts and communicates itself to the young generation most endangered in tense political times?
There’s a strange loss of self in these songs. On one hand, they seem to reconnect with the robust indie years of the post-grunge-pop that marked the band’s fourth album, Es ist egal, Aber, attempting to find clever genre tapestries and use (for grunge) uncharacteristic instrumentation. But the shoddy, punk rock attitude and tone is wholly missing.
On the other, there’s a lavish singer songwriter kitsch to the ballads and overall tone, that has von Lowtzow sound tired and bored, rarely emoting anger, pain or defiance – usually his strongest tools of communication! Golden Years instead seems comfortable, self congratulatory and predictable. McPhail was still present during the recording, but it’s unclear if his struggle impacted these tracks – it certainly sounds as if the group was not focused fully.
As I write this, Germany is anticipating what has been billed a watershed parliamentary election – as everywhere, one rich with controversies and anxiety. In difficult times, we look at our idols for guidance, or at least inspiration. This doesn’t mean agit-prop – but also doesn’t exclude it. For the pop-political compass of the nation that has been billed abroad as ‘Europe’s centre’ to release a record this tame, this apolitical and disinterested is… somewhat shocking! Sure, their self titled White Album was equally introspective, but within its clever, poetic structure was a rich, philosophical core. Die Unendlichkeit might have seemed overtly intellectual in its grand, sweeping musical expressionism, but it still felt personal and a drive to explore songs as musical units. On Golden Years, it feels like Tocotronic misread their qualities to such a shocking degree, they forgot about the value of their oppositional status, instead just combining disparate elements with lacklustre performances. It’s a puzzlingly bland record from an institution that has achieved pretty much everything in their three decades of existence. But most painfully, it seems wholly irrelevant to the world – and time – that it was born into: instead of hardening up, it falls down flatly.
