Love Machine
Düsseldorf - Tokyo

Exotic towns in the album title, and in the music we are mostly visiting the German town of Düsseldorf. For the first time the band is singing in German and do that for most of the tracks on the album, it is just a little bit in English. It is their third album, and it has a nice white cover with red lettering. It was recorded on some farm in the Schwarzwald forests and some basements in the band’s hometown Düsseldorf. Can that be something exciting?

Musically it is alternative rock with krautrock, fuzz, psychedelia and those kinds of things, musically perhaps not too ordinary. But the vocals are quite dull, it is not much life in the singing, and you could claim that there is room for improvement in the vocal department. The same can be said about the production, I think the sound is a bit flat and the farm, basement thing, seems more like a gimmick than anything that actually means anything for the music. Good thing is that the album is fairly short, that is always a positive and perhaps even more when the album lacks a bit of dynamics as this one does.

A bit dull, that is how I see this album. They might not be overly typical in terms of style but it is nothing that stands out and weak vocals as well as somewhat tired or dull songs makes it seem like the album lacks a bit of life and soul. It is pretty dull. I don’t really think that any song stands out and it feels a bit like one of those great coal-powered industrial towns where the people are grey, and they look sad. I get a bleak picture of Düsseldorf from listening to this album, I have never been there so it might be that it is a polluted grey and depressive place. If that is so they paint a good picture, but they do not make a great album.

Is it worth checking out? If you like the video tracks in this review it probably is, but my view is that it is a fairly dull album that we can do without. Somehow I doubt that it will be amongst the favourites when we are looking back at the music that was on offer in 2021, I just don’t think that this album offers anything really interesting.

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