Good songs are like pictures. Like paintings or film scenes. For the ears of the listeners, captured, painted, conjured up stories of word and sound. Just like fluppe songs. Strangely intoxicating things happen again on their second album. These are song worlds sketched and colourfully coloured with an imaginative, detail-loving hand.

After their debut album BLÜTE, released in 2021, the four musicians from Hamburg again play a poetically spun indie rock on their new album. The band consists of Josef Endicott, Antoine Laval, Lars Brunkhorst and Christian Klindworth. As a Hamburg band, fluppe are of course used to the relevant comparisons. There have been from the beginning, even if nothing seems to fit properly. Perhaps they have simply absorbed a little bit of everything: the aggressiveness of Turbostaat, the will to tenderness and the pleasure in fabulating of Tocotronic. But above all, fluppe simply do their own thing in the world of the new German post-punk generation. fluppe sound the way only fluppe can sound.

On BOUTIQUE the melodies are even sweeter, even more infectious than on BLÜTE last year. And even more light-footed are the narrative hooks with which fluppe try to cheat the rugged daily grind. The second record was written during the tough weeks and months of the pandemic. Sure, we all remember those days of strangeness. Of course, the rehearsal room of fluppe in Hamburg-Billstedt was also affected. Nevertheless, the four wanted to avoid this time being too present in the lyrics, says Christian. At most subconsciously, between the lines and deep inside the songs, you can feel it: "this mood between resignation and longing".

Much more important to the band during the creation of BOUTIQUE than the little bit of local colour was musical curiosity and the joy of experimentation. fluppe had no desire to make the same record again and therefore decided to shake up the featherbeds of their songwriting. "Our idea was to take a clear step in the direction of pop," says Christian, "to spruce everything up a bit, so to speak. The result is music that touches and confuses in equal parts. fluppe's songs build blurred backdrops and vague settings for themes and feelings, which the listeners can then continue to spin themselves. Like the best storytellers, they leave plenty of room for their own thoughts. One thing is clear: German indie rock has not been as detailed, shimmering and enticing as on BOUTIQUE for a long time.

Annett Scheffel
(Musikexpress, Dummy Magazine, Spiegel, SZ)