Music

Element of Crime makes a smile out of the November gray

08/11/2016 written by Nina Müller

Their songs warm the heart like a hot whisky warms the soul in November. Now the German cult band Element of Crime, led by singer and writer Sven Regener, is coming to Switzerland for a mini-tour. They have their latest album "Lieblingsfarben und Tiere" in their luggage.

The band's name is doubly misleading: Element of Crime practically only sing German songs, and they are not about crime, but about the really big feelings that have to do with love and how people can best deal with the November gray of everyday life.

The new album by Element of Crime, the five-piece German pop band with the poetic lyrics, once again presents the entire emotional universe in ten songs - whether in "Rette mich vor mir selber", a love ballad, or in "Dunkle Wolken".

Element of Crime: From English to German lyrics

While the first album by the Berlin band, founded in 1985, was still in English ("Basically Sad", 1986), the next album title "Try to be Mensch" shows that the English lyrics were beginning to mix with German lyrics. In 1991, Element of Crime released their first purely German-language album "Damals hinterm Mond".

Cinema film "Herr Lehmann" and performance at Ina's Nacht

Sven Regener, the band's singer and lyricist, is also a writer. His first novel "Herr Lehmann" from 2001 was a huge success as a book and as a movie: no wonder that fans love Element of Crime above all for their poetic lyrics.

With "Am Ende denke ich immer nur an Dich", Regener was a guest on NDR's Ina's Nacht in 2009:

Songs that turn nothingness into a smile

And this is how the band best describes the music on their new album on their homepage:

"It's always the music that fans need when the sky is grayer than allowed. It's always the songs that turn fear or nothingness into an elegant smile."

ELEMENT OF CRIME
20.11.16,Kaufleuten Klubsaal Zurich
TICKETS

Translated with DeepL