There’s one new Danish name you simply can’t get around these days – actually a German one: Blaue Blume. The last couple of weeks we fired off this name on Good because Danish especially in connection to the band’s many live appearances that we’ve been lucky to witness. We never got around mentioning the quartet’s second EP “15.01.12” though, released a few days before their sold-out headliner debut concert in September.
Truth be told, “15.01.12” consists of 4 songs, of which 3 had already seen the light of day before – and had definitely played their part in turning Blaue Blume into the critically acclaimed act they are by now. But there are worse things than having wonderful “On New Years Eve”, “Jealousy” and “Helen” re-released in one collection.
And then there’s the EP’s fourth and last track – “Within A Skull”. A new track. And what a new one!
From the very first listen “Within A Skull” just hit me hard with its stagy energy. Blaue Blume’s music has often been described as theatrical, but none of their songs before rattled off such a mental cinema – or rather mental theater scene in my head. There’s something very “Phantom-Of-The-Opera” about what it does to my imagination. It replays the momentum when the drama’s protagonist and its antagonist clash during the story’s climax, yet melts them into one persona: “Fix yourself a drink… and drink until you sink, to the bottom of your heart, here you’ll find the most unkind and terrifying devil you must fight” – And BAM!
“Within A Skull” is no song to bike to – it will make you terribly slow until you stop and change the music (It’s ridiculous, but I tried it). This is no song to cook or clean up to – it will make you crawl back into your bed, wishing you could hide from reality forever (I tried this as well).
This is simply no song that wants to share your attention with any of those mundane daily life activities – it wants you as a whole or nothing at all. It approaches you, and challenges you. It tells you something intimate, so it fxcking wants you to listen. And listen means it wants you to reflect, to open up, to take in, and to become vulnerable. Just as itself is.
Stream the whole EP “15.01.12” on Spotify or WiMP, or buy it over at iTunes.