Manafonistas

Letzte Woche, endlich live, die Band aus dem Amerikanischen Süden. Man könnte die Alabama Shakes für ein prototypisches Beispiel der ewigen Wiederkehr des Alten halten, wären sie nicht so originell in ihren Songs, so überzeugend in ihrer Darbietung. Roh und rau und zärtlich; in ihrer archaischen Kraft erinnert mich das Album BOYS & GIRLS an das Debütalbum der Violent Femmes.

„Ocean is often distant, zoomed-out, and removed from the action of the stories he tells, but it’s a distance achieved through hard-earned experience and an almost bottomless sense of compassion. Distance, it turns out, is a way of coming closer. Really, Frank Ocean doesn’t directly address pain on channel ORANGE. He writes and sings about wet t-shirt contests and strip clubs, about rich and poor people fumbling through their lives. Happiness, in these songs, is an equal-opportunity feeling — Ocean writes about that, too. He drifts in and out of these scenes, too smart to be truly hopeful, too hopeful to be depressed. He watches as people fall down, get up, laugh, and move resiliently into the dark: a story we all need to hear.“ – Mike Powell