Anyone who hears his voice once will never forget it: warm and raspy, political and laconic. Karl Neukauf is a songwriter from Berlin, someone who himself used to drink in the basement bars he sings about. "Behind Geraniums and Curtains" is the title of his fourth album, an album full of strange and touching stories, collected during the long nights of the capital and on the outskirts of the country. It tells of love and missing someone, of leaving and coming home, of old friends and old ladies, of guys hanging out at the bar, somewhere between Bottrop and Hoyerswerda, between Hamburg and Idar-Oberstein. "Behind Geraniums and Curtains" is a journey through Germany in 2018, recorded in Berlin and Poland, in East Germany and the Ruhr region.
Karl Neukauf's voice is catchy, and he plays almost everything you hear on the record himself: bass and electric guitar, grand piano and Hammond organ, Fender Rhodes, harmonium and Mellotron, even a shenai, an Indian oboe. And whenever you think things might get a little too cozy, a little too chanson-like, he expands the range of instruments, plays on glass bottles, grill grates, and metal buckets – and hurls lines at you that sound like this: Do it yourself and build yourself a coffin. Paint it, put something in it that you might be able to use later.
Page A
1. Let's go to the Elbe
2. False Enemy #2
3. Tell me where are you?
4. Silence of the Night
Side B
1. Far far away
2. In this city
3. Coffin never never
4. Or
5. Hotel Room 304
6. In the Arms of Morpheus
