Lali Puna

More than half a decade has elapsed since the release of Faking
The Books, Lali Puna’s third (and hitherto most recent) longplayer,
but the band’s impact on the climate of electronic rock
music remains palpable. Along with sister-group The Notwist,
this Weilheim quartet have helped map out the musical
landscape for modern, experimentally minded pop music, and
Our Inventions finds Lali Puna continuing to push the frontiers of
their medium.
‘Rest Your Head’ serves as a perfectly poised re-introduction to
the band and all they’ve become. Initiated by waves of glassy
pulsations and warm, swelling synths, the song has the feel of a
reverse-lullaby – gently winding its way through reposeful
melodies, guided by the welcoming whisper of Trebeljahr’s vocal
until the final third kicks in with drum machine hits, and you’re
wide awake. While Faking The Books, with its vibrant riffs and
extrovert tendencies, had the sound of a record begging to be
played live, Our Inventions exhibits the hallmarks of an album
spun from intensive studio-bound introspection. Two of the most
explosive and ebullient songs here – ‘Remember’ and ‘Everything
Is Always’ – confirm so much of what’s special about Lali Puna:
all the elements are at once precision engineered and delivered
with absolute heartfelt conviction; perhaps never before have
such jubilant pop hooks been so meticulously and fastidiously
crafted, yet you can always hear the soul behind these machines.
This is an album that’s made for and about the modern world,
concerning itself with the driving forces of progress and
technological obsession. Trebeljahr’s lyrics are suggestive of
alienation and disenfranchisement from nature during the ironylaced
title-track: “The birds in the trees/Singing our mobile
melodies/What a sweet, sweet world”, later stipulating that
‘progress’ never really gets us anywhere on ‘Everything Is
Always’ (“Nothing new/These days”), while hinting at the
ultimate bankruptcy of the all-devouring consumer age during
‘Safe Tomorrow’: “Never going anywhere/Don’t stop by and get
to know/Stuff your memory with facts/Save Save Save”.
The final song on the tracklist is ‘Out There’, a collaboration with
the Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Yukihiro Takahashi. The version
appearing here is an alternate rendering of the track that
appeared on Takahashi’s Page By Page album in 2009. Here
Trebeljahr addresses the global financial collapse (“Their
kingdom’s past, their kingdom’s gone/Just ruins and plain
desert/It’s all burnt down, we’re left alone”), and sure enough,
Our Inventions is a body of work that keenly engages with the
concerns of its time, one that confronts the excesses and everaccelerating
pace of modernity.
The sublime, virtuoso electronic arrangements of Our Inventions
directly lock onto the record’s recurrent key themes, depicting a
world inundated with technology and consumed by a fixation on
progress – simultaneously passing commentary on this state of
affairs and overcoming it. When Trebeljahr intones “Things move
on/I’m gonna work fast because tomorrow comes quick” it
sounds like it’s being sung from the perspective of someone
who’s already there.

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