After a six-year hiatus, German indie rock act the Notwist will return
June 17 with “The Devil, You + Me,” its follow up to 2002’s breakout “Neon Golden.”
The 11-song set was composed and recorded over the last two years at the group’s Alien Research Center studio in its hometown of Weilheim, Germany.
For the last several years, members of the Notwist have been involved in numerous side projects, most notably a collaboration under the name 13 & God with San Francisco-based hip-hop act Themselves. That partnership proved to be fruitful.
“When we started with this Notwist record, there were a lot of ideas from the 13 & God recordings,” founding member Markus Acher tells Billboard.com. “But we don’t want every band to sound the same, so we have to think what is different with the Notwist, and the reasons why we should make a record.”
As such, “The Devil, You + Me” sees the group experimenting with different sonic arrangements and dipping into dark, folk-based sounds at times, contrasted with optimistic, upbeat guitar rock. Longtime fans need not fret, however — the band is still mixing in a fair amount of electronics, the bread and butter of the Notwist’s past.
Of the different moods, Acher says that the band members have all had personal problems that are coming through in the new crop of songs.
“There were friends that were very sick, or struggled with bad things in their lives; they were a part of our lives, so they had to appear in the music, in the lyrics,” Acher says. “We’ve all got children, and that’s also very happy. There were a lot of feelings that were much stronger this time than [when] we made ‘Neon Golden,’ when things were kind of balanced.”
The Notwist will tour Europe in May and June, with sporadic festival dates throughout the rest of the summer. A U.S. tour is in the works, beginning in October.
Here is the track listing for “You, Devil + Me”:
“Good Lies”
“Where In This World”
“Gloomy Planets”
“Your Alphabet”
“The Devil, You + Me”
“Gravity”
“Sleep”
“On Planet Off”
“Boneless”
“Hands On Us”
“Gone Gone Gone”
