By: Andrew Lyman
CHICAGO, USA

Jewels, the most recent album by German post-industrial institution, Einstürzende Neubauten, is strange for the fact that it may be the closest the group has yet come to a typical album. Not typical in the sense that it approaches (or even grazes) a mainstream sound, or that it is a blase’ or apathetic affectation, but there is something about Jewels that manages to fall right in the center of all the may twists and turns this bewildering band has taken over it’s many year run. It is a darker album than they’ve put out in a while, but that just makes the feeling that it is the median of everything they’ve been exploring for the past 30 years of existence more acute.

I should love this album, and I may yet, given some more time with it. Neubauten are absolutely one of my favorite bands. I enjoy the entire history of their maturation as artists. From the early anarchistic days of noise and destruction, through their incorporation of pop-like sensibilities, to their (in my opinion) current mature period going back about a decade. For as long as they’ve been going, they’ve remained relevant. For every new path they have explored and every new leaf they have turned, they have done something surprising and inventive with it. Their continued experimentation has been fascinating to follow. Their music can be frightening, moving, beautiful, inspiring, maddening, mesmerizing, everything. Few bands exists that are as fascinating as a whole as Einstürzende Neubauten, and that is precisely why I think I’m having trouble with Jewels. It really feels like what you would get if you ran the band’s entire history through a compressor. For this reason, it would make somewhat of an excellent introduction to the band. In fact, I would say that if you have never heard Einstürzende Neubauten before, this may be one of the best chances you will ever get for a quick introduction, even more so than the Strategies Against Architecture Compilations which mark three distinct phases of the band.

neubauten.org