Echokammer – Spotify – Bandcamp – Peter Kemp’s review
So here we begin the 2014 Countdown with the album that started it all, that made this girl from Canada fall in love with the Sound of Munich and acknowledge so many wonderful artists. This album was a life changing experience for me honestly. I could go on and on for hours about how quintessential that band is and how, as individuals and as a collective, they are an inspiration of transcending multidisciplinary stage performance and how I want the Scene here, in Montreal, to be inspired by these amazing ladies and their work. This band made this blog what it is today. It also made the DKP fans blog happen, a blog that is so full of love that it’s nearly indecent.
Let’s talk about the music for a second (or an eternity).
Not only you get sucked in the album from the first notes of Temporary Secretary, the catchy sing-along of these amazing varied voices that are so full of kick-ass attitude. These voices that are presented to you individually in the next song, Nice. It’s worth to note that both of these songs are (very well chosen) covers, and it’s only at Late at Night that you really get to MEET the lyricists behind DAMENKAPELLE.
Once you tasted the catchy refrain of Late at Night, you are doomed. You want to sing along too. You want to start your own no-nonsense women-only band and dress-up and put war paint on your face and look out for a stage name.
This is what DAMENKAPELLE does to you. AND IT DOESN’T STOP. Rollerdisco never gets old, even after 500 listens.
Motorbike will lodge itself in your brain and never leave. Johnny neither. It’ll convert your mothers, your grandmothers, your kids to the cult. Congratulation, you are only half way through the album and you already sold your soul to the chapel ladies (a poor google translation that stuck with the tumblr fanbase, because yes, it is a cult. It is!)
Heaven & Hell will make you want to drink Bavarian beer while smashing the state. Yes yes.
And then it gets heavy. After H&H, you are in the good predispositions for Cheater and Cobwebs. Welcome on the psycho-spooky-trance journey. You think you’ll get a respite after the climax at the end of Cobwebs but NO! Mistress Voice is an iron hand in a velvet glove. It spins you ‘round and leaves you dizzy for the poisonous honey of Frl. Milano’s voice in Butcher.
You have 3 seconds to learn to breathe again when Zombie Girl comes on. And then it’s over, sucker! Get on board, let the beat rock you gently back and forth as an unforgiving tide of IT’S ALRIGHT IT’S ALRIGHT becomes the most luminous thing in your dark dark mind.
Congratulation, put on your Fake Leather jacket, you are now a member of the cult. There’s the EP if you need a Damenkapelle fix.