»Invisible Sea« | Julian Knote: Already comforting

Since 2010, the band Die Nerven has been singing and blasting songs about fear, doubt, and difficult ego states into the world. The three people who make up the band are among the most productive rock musicians in this country. Everything has to come out, but through different channels: There just isn't enough room in the mother ship. And of the three, bassist Julian Knoth, who plays in just three bands on the side (Die Benjamins, Peter Muffin Trio, Yum Yum Club) and runs or has run a somewhat peripheral electronic project (Oh, come on!), is the least active. That is, in direct comparison to Nerven guitarist Max Rieger (various albums with the dark-black electronic ensemble All diese Gewalt!, black metal with Obstler, something called Die Heilsarmee, and electronics with Jauche) and drummer Kevin Kuhn (also Die Heilsarmee, sometimes Karies and Scharping and Wolf Mountains, and above all, the very good queer pop band Shitney Beers).

This is just worth mentioning here again at the beginning, because all these projects, bands, and albums have something in common. At some point, one will probably have to interpret Nerven's entire oeuvre from a pop-historical perspective as a single body of work. This also applies to the outsourcing: In the mother ship, for example, there is a conspicuous absence of humor, which can then be found in The Salvation Army and Scharping.

And Julian Knoth's first solo album, which is actually the subject here, is also serious and never cheerful. The lyrics are mostly written in the first person and deal with the irritations, reflections, and generally the lyrical self's relationship to the world. This is touching if you identify with these descriptions, and not otherwise. What Knoth sings has a compelling simplicity that, when these songs catch you off guard, gently touches on the banal.

Best of all, you can hear that the deliberately simple language is the program here and works if you allow it. "The rain falls on my head / The wind beats in my face / And the rain wets my hair / But I don't feel all that." You know it, rain, hair, and can immediately connect with this voice if you want. With the ten songs on "Unsichtbares Meer" it takes a while, but then they catch on. The distance disappears, the "invisible sea" promised by the album title has nothing oceanic about it: Julian Knoth sings relatively directly about what you could roughly describe as depressive states. And not in screaming mode, but with an acoustic guitar, a few additional instruments and a small string ensemble, the Trio Abstrich.

The chamber music quality protects "Unsichtbares Meer" from the campfire feel. And it structures it. While Rieger and Knoth on Die Nerven sing loudly about the perceived devastation of their own biographies, here the music is tidied up and sorted in a smaller form. Because Die Nerven are a noise rock band, they speak from the present, even in songs that deal with the past ("A toast to youth / Thank God it's over"). Julian Knoth looks from the aftermath at sad events, depressions, and questions that remain unanswered. "I don't see much because it's dark / I don't know much because I know how to forget," but sung in such a way that it doesn't weigh you down. It's all comforting, indeed.

Julian Knoth: »Invisible Sea« (Italic Recordings)