FIRST FATAL KISS –
danke gut
(CD/LP, zach)
“Danke gut”
(“Fine, thank you”) is a phrase people around here use without thinking
when other people ask them “how are you?” without thinking. In my line
of business, this one is extended to “fine, thank you, lot’s of work”
and then the other person is supposed to say “but it is good when there is
a lot to do.” Some places and some jobs and some lives are impossible to
stand when you hate clichés. But you know, I adhere to the words of the
dude, so to stay in the parlance of our times: “the dude abides”. That
helps in many ways. Maybe it helps you to find a viewpoint in your live, and
I mean a viewpoint on a lot of things, practically everthing, that helps you
to relax and ease down.
Take for instance
First Fatal Kiss. I guess there is a lot in this world the women in this
trio could get upset about (and they are most certainly right) but they
won’t let it bring them down. Instead they stick together for half a dozen
years before starting to record their debut album. They play a mix of lo-fi
homemade punk-pop, so basically early New Wave with sparks of electronica.
They sing in at least three languages and mix political viewpoints with
personal experiences and humour. Especially the latter is often
unfortunately missing in bands with a strict political message.
First Fatal Kiss
on the other hand seem to see their existence as a political statement and
therefore see no reason to push any kind of message in your face. Instead
the feminist politics, political theory and history lessons creep in through
the side doors, the liner notes, the places they chose to play in, the bands
they play with, their appearance, etc. “Weinstein cries” is a song about
jews that were killed in 1938 during the beginning of the Nazi regime in
Austria, but it is also a fine pop song - it is a cover version of Austrian
indie pop legends Snakkerdu Densk. More cover versions are from “die Nutzs
and Freiwillike Selbstkontrolle. Sometimes it is obvious, other times hidden
further in the subtext.
Programmatically
the record starts with a slew of commands: “Let’s fuck the jazz …
let’s fuck the punk … let’s fuck the rock … let there be more
schweinejazz/punk/rock yeah!” It seems to be the programm of the season to
add that contradictions and opposites shall not be feared, but fullheartedly
embraced. Simplicity is the main rule of the songs, but never naivity or
clichés. They even manage to play a decent 2/4-beat and then call it
“Bach”, which is not an allusion to the composer of the same name (or I
guess it isn’t as J.S. Bach wrote enormously effective and complex music,
whereas this song shines with straightforwardness) but the German word for a
very small river.
At times they like
to boil things down to their core and then strip off all that is left of a
song until the bones of the song are laid bare. For instance “Ausflug”
(“journey”) has an Eighties electro beat like early Mute-bands and the
lyrics are the sentence “journey in the electro land” over and over
again in German, English, French, Italian and what is probably Spanish (? I
am no good at languages, sorry). Or the song “Mädchen” (“girl”)
whose total lyrics are “I believe I am a little pink.” In German. It’s
like a modern age gender study on growing up as a girl in a world completely
dominated by styled, sexualized images of what it means to be a woman,
filled with merchandise and services to help you on the way, in form of a
third of a haiku.
First Fatal Kiss
could easily be the thinking girl’s favorite pop band, playing all kinds
of places up and down the country (and abroad) subverting the people with
their charm and intelligence. And let’s all work together to make this
world a better place, at least a little better for a little time. So that at
one point in the future, when somebody asks us and really wants to know, we
may answer truthfully and from the heart: “Fine, thank you.”
