“Where I Lived, And What I Lived For” is my seventh album to be released in 2021. An album that follows on seamlessly from its predecessor “Random Karma” (2018) and offers domesticated indie/alternative rock.
First of all, however, the title of the album needs to be clarified. “Where I Lived, And What I Lived For” is a chapter from the famous book ‘Walden’ by Henry David Thoreau from 1854, in which he describes his temporary escape from civilization and his life in nature. Not as an escape from the world, but as an attempt to realize an alternative lifestyle close to nature. In essence, he was probably concerned with the question of what a person really needs to live. And for many people today, this seems more relevant than ever. And so several songs on the album deal with these questions and themes: “Home Is A Long Way Away”, “You Never Knew Yourself”, “Ahab” or “Die Spuren in denen du gehst” (incidentally, the only song with German lyrics and therefore probably a special tip on the album).
What is immediately noticeable when listening to “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” compared to the previous, especially older releases, is the clearly more emphasized indie character of the album. It is more direct and raw than the previous albums. Also worth mentioning is the fact that – with the exception of “Die Spuren in denen du gehst” – all the lyrics on “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” are in English. While the previous albums offered a more or less varied mix of German and English lyrics (there are even two songs in French on the first two records), this time – in keeping with the main theme of the album – the focus was on a deliberate, intentional reduction and restriction in terms of language. In combination with the equally reduced instrumentation (essentially guitars, drums, bass and vocals), the result is a highly compact and dense listening experience that is wonderful to listen to both quietly and turned up and loud.
If you wanted to pick out individual tracks from “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”, your first choice would probably be the three singles. If you have already heard these or would like to get a new, different impression, then the aforementioned “Die Spuren in denen du gehst” (The Tracks You Walk In) would be a good choice, which is a little out of the ordinary due to its German lyrics alone. Where I Lived, And What I Lived For” was produced by Heiko Schulz, who was also responsible for the technical realization of the ideas on the previous albums, and who also contributed the bass for this album.