STERNTAUCHER

Sterntaucher is by far not as bad as some would make you believe. I was a Novalis fan when it came out and I was young and interested in the music of the time as well as in 70s prog, so I didn't mind prog bands trying out shorter and more easily accessible songs, and I liked this album quite a lot. The first two songs are quite straight. "Faehrmann" has a good chorus and "Ich will hier raus" (actually both of them) are very well fitted to the lyrics (which are about the will to escape bad situations). I didn't like "Abschied" a lot in the beginning, but it is a haunting, very emotional song about the death of a friend, and I turn back to it regularly since then. "Grenzen" and "Keiner kann gewinnen" are the longest songs, both rather slow. "Keiner kann gewinnen" is a rather intense melody that works well for me, there is no complexity here but at least some development and some good guitar. "Grenzen" is about tearing down borders, after "Kein Frieden" on the previous album and "Flossenengel" another example of their somewhat naive but certainly authentic political engagement of the band. Again this is not really complex but intense. "Sinus" is the only instrumental, also rather slow in the beginning but taking off later, of usual Novalis instrumental quality and even rather above average. The title track has a surprising reggae-like chorus and while it is not anywhere near prog, it's a fun thing to try out. The only song I really don't like is "Ein klein wenig mehr", which sounds like a rather ill-advised shot at a "Schlager" (traditional German hit single). It is the shortest track and therefore doesn't hurt much, but unfortunately this of all songs is closest to the vast majority of their next, rather dreadful, Bumerang album.

I can still listen well to much of this more than 30 years later; I think that although I'm not normally very interested in lyrics, a major strength of this record is that the songs support the emotional, authentic and direct lyrics very well, qualities not often found in prog (and unfortunately hard to appreciate for those who don't understand German). On the other hand, Muehlboeck's voice is not at its best here and sounds somewhat tired at times.