Thomas Lang: The German Alphabet (CD on Klee Music)

Band: Thomas Lang
Label: Klee Music
Title: The German Alphabet

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Band:Thomas Lang
Title:The German Alphabet
Reviewed By:John Clarkson
Date Published:08/11/2016

Label:Klee Music
Format:CD
Release Year:2016
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‘The German Alphabet’ is the fifth studio album and first in twenty years from the Toxteth-born and still Liverpool-based singer-songwriter Thomas Lang.

Recorded largely in that city’s Parr Studios which Lang co-owns, he collaborated on it with producers Alan Currie and Colin McKay, their aim being to create a set of imaginary film soundtracks in the style of John Barry and Ennio Morricone.

‘The German Alphabet’ is being released in two editions. The vinyl edition – the ‘Munich’ edition - features ten new tracks, including a previously unreleased Lang song, ‘Lost Till I Found You’, while the CD edition –‘Dusseldorf’ – has extra tracks and alternative mixes of those on the ‘Munich’ album.

Although he does have a band for live work, what is astonishing about ‘The German Alphabet’ is that Lang chose to record the majority of it over a twelve month period in quiet slots at Parr Studios usually by himself. Much of it, recorded with the aid of electronic instruments, is, however, symphonic in sound.

The title and opening track is a whirlwind of escalating and crashing synthesised strings and brass, topped off with a razor-sharp and surreally comical lyric from Lang about the lengths we will go to in our hope of gaining love (“I know that you know that you are a beautiful thing/Living in my head and yet you pay no rent….I have got to reach you and I will do it yet/If I have to run through every single letter of the German alphabet”).

Elsewhere ‘Pale Imitation’ is a classic torch song about a disintegrating love affair (“If you ever wake up and find you are on our own, then you are not alone”). Throwing a soaring saxophone into the mix in its final minute, it combines this with the shimmering, tingling sounds of an equally classic 60’s soundtrack.

‘Film Stars’, one of the tracks exclusive to the ‘Dusseldorf’ album, is meanwhile much starker in tone, and, based around a solitary piano, takes its inspiration from ‘Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool’, the memoir of Peter Turner, which told of his love affair with and the death of Hollywood icon, Gloria Grahame.

‘I Go Wild’ has the brass-laden, upbeat sound of the big bands of the 1940s and 1950s (“Just the very mention of your name will leave me/And I will go wild again”), and ‘Lucky Me’, as befits Lang who supported Nina Simone at Ronnie Scott’s in the 1990s, is a smoky, jazz-tinged torch anthem (“And if you don’t love me, then the only thing that I am still sure of is needing you/And lucky me”).

‘The German Alphabet’ is a diverse and imaginative album that impressively takes the influences of earlier eras and then convincingly updates them for the twenty-first century.

Track Listing:

01) The German Alphabet
02) Rain
03) Pale Imitation
04) Lost Till I Found You
05) Pulse
06) Be Missing
07) I Go Wild
08) Lucky Me
09) Sugar Don't Work
10) Watchman

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Related Links

https://thomaslang.uk/
https://twitter.com/thomaslanguk/
https://www.facebook.com/thomaslang.uk/
https://www.instagram.com/thomaslanguk/
https://www.youtube.com/user/ThomasLangUK/

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Versatile first studio in twenty years from Liverpool-based singer-songwriter Thomas Lang, who takes the influences of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s and then updates them for present times

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The German Alphabet - CD
Versatile first studio in twenty years from Liverpool-based singer-songwriter Thomas Lang, who takes the influences of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s and then updates them for present times

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