The British star producers Xenomania (Pet Shop Boys, Sugababes) recently asked Naomi for a sample (they got it); Naomi's three year old fan favourite "Needle On The Record" is a constant seller in the US iTunes Store; their Myspace and Facebook pages are brimming with love letters from Russia, Mexico, Texas or Taiwan. In their native Germany they are still something of a best-kept secret, regardless of consistently euphoric press reviews, but this might well change with The Big Shapes, their new, fifth Album on Mole Listening Pearls. The abundance of ideas, the songwriting, the attitude – everything has grown bigger, louder and sharper in the Naomi universe. Bernd Lechler and Nico Tobias still show the odd fit of incurable melancholy, but this time any world weariness comes clad in choruses that make you want to shout "Holy Kylie!". The overall sound of the album reminds one of... well, nothing else, really. Massive backbeats carry scratchy guitar riffs, buzzing synths cut through gentle electric piano lines as the Berlin duo digs deep into the pop vocabulary of the past four decades. "Fujiyama“ is an electro blues with elegiac Melodica and a downright symphonic final, “Candy Floss“ is a lazily stomping contemporary funk pop monster, and what happens in “Hello Fever“ after a soaring cosmic intro could almost be labeled as prog rock.
The thing is, Naomi never play it safe here. They seem to intentionally provoke the coolness police, casting away any tasteful cleverness of comparable indietronic acts and, smiling quietly, they lay it on thick. The Big Shapes draws on the forbidden side of the Eighties (the Phil Collins drums on “Morning Belle“), mischievously quotes heavy metal guitar lines (as for a few bars in “Dragon Tree“), and makes nods toward Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode as well as Chic and the psychedelic Beatles. Still, like any great fun, The Big Shapes is propelled by great seriousness. “First Things First“ gleefully exaggerates the disillusioned pragmatism of the noughties, “Hello Fever“ sounds like a feverish dream about the financial crisis, “Sleep“ ponders the fact that only those who don’t act at all make no mistakes. Behind the stoically grooving psychedelic pop of “Don‘t Die Again OK“ there lurks a childhood nightmare, and the vocoder-based final track “I‘ll Be The Past“, possibly the most touching song of the album, is a humble, obviously autobiographically inspired meditation on mortality, almost a prayer.
Reviewing their last album, Aquarium, Rolling Stone magazine described Naomi as “wondrous“. They still are. Just this time with a bang.
