Leaving the somewhat bleak and interchangeable city center toward the Old Harbor, just before crossing the steel bascule bridge at the customs quay and passing the Maritime Accident Command Center on the left, you'll almost reliably find the small Knobloch fish shack there every day. Its owner probably suspected years ago that there was no better place in all of Cuxhaven to offer shipwrecked revelers, after their last dinner, a proper crab sandwich to take with them on their walk to the Alte Liebe, the sentimental landmark of this city at the mouth of the Elbe into the rough North Sea, where they'll then wave melancholically and a little tipsy to the giant container ships on their journeys out into the world. If this moment were a scene from a film, let's say by Jim Jarmusch, then it would be quite possible that the two new songs from the Dad Horse Experience would start right now, and the camera would pull in to reveal the open Wadden Sea in all its grey, bittersweet beauty.
These two songs, presented to us in the summer of 2022 by Dad Horse Ottn, the band's eponymous mastermind and creative all-around genius, are remarkable not only because they're released on vinyl in the wonderful and far too rarely used 10-inch format. They're especially so because they open up a world we'd love to immerse ourselves in for much longer than just two six-minute tracks. And because for Ottn himself, it's also a departure to new shores, a farewell to the wonderfully offbeat world of basement gospel he once created.
01 Night like a knife
02 Cuxhaven
