The world, both big and small, near and a bit farther away, needs hugs, needs embraces. Perhaps these days indeed more than ever before.
And the new, perhaps somewhat unexpected, even un-anticipated single from 'Naked Lunch', their first release in seven years, ten years after the soundtrack for the film JACK, twelve years after ALL IS FEVER, their most recent album to date, is a song like a hug. A strong one, a heartfelt one, a, dare we say, true one. Well then - and only then! - even more beautiful and effective when it is reciprocated, returned, carried on …
Oliver Welter, since 1991 the voice, heart, and mind of the then Klagenfurt band, celebrates from Vienna with fellow musicians Boris Hauf and Alex Jezdinsky, as well as producer Wolfgang Lehmann, nothing less than life, the unbroken love for life with all its joys, ecstasies, and possibilities, broken and kept promises, (resolved) contradictions, (overcome) adversities and resistances - "to the fall of every fascist".
Pop in the best sense, the song derives its minutes transcending duration and validity from the intensely drawn and vividly perceived moments within it, specific and universal at the same time: "to places where we drink - when we laugh and cry / to those faces we need - when we’re high and dry / to stories I’ve been told - to the truth and to the lie / to all and everyone I love". And: "to those kids out on the streets taking care of human needs / to Billy Wilder movies and to holidays in Greece / to wind in my hair and snow on my tongue / to all and everyone I love."
So sings TO ALL AND EVERYONE I LOVE almost by itself, an instant choir of potentially many (!) voices of self-empowerment and self-awareness, an anthem of unrestrained empathy that openly insists on itself as a principle. Perhaps pathetically, but a human, non-elevating, never excluding pathos that clearly tells us that the project humanity (still!) is not necessarily failed or must fail.
And just like that, TO ALL AND EVERYONE I LOVE, the single, is the prelude to the new Naked Lunch album LIGHTS AND A SLIGHT TASTE OF DEATH. Every beat, every sung sentence, every sound detail already makes it clear why we need Naked Lunch today more than ever and it is infinitely beautiful that they are back: Now and so!
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
