In their recordings, the Notwist might give off the impression of being a sleepy little electro-pop band, but don’t let that twist your notions of what their live show is like. Sure, they hide behind the gentle guise of glasses (four out of the five touring members wear them), but in a live setting, their post-rock and hardcore roots really start to seep out.

The pattern for the night, if you can call it that, was usually a slow build, getting into a groove, then destroying it completely. The band was much heavier, particularly with bass, than on record. But even when the simmering aggression wasn’t coming through in song, it occasionally came through in action. During the intro to “Where in this World,” frontman Markus Acher yanked his guitar strings as though determined to break them.

The Notwist, “Where In This World” (download)

Still, there’s a reason why the audience sported more intelligent eyewear and phones than the average concert attendees. Band member Martin Gretschmann directed much of the band’s electronic components with a pair of Wiimotes, the controllers for the Nintendo Wii, and Markus Acher flipped through a stack of vinyl for sampling purposes. Gretschmann held up interesting toy after interesting toy for our admiration, and the band members looked amusedly awkward when noticing the flurry of cameras snapping pictures, each nuance part geekish yet part spectacle.

The setlist was evenly distributed between older hits and newer, but most of the material from The Devil, You + Me hasn’t quite reached the sing-a-long status of favorites from Neon Golden. “Pick Up the Phone” and “One With The Freaks” were tender favorites, requested via shouts from the audience, who also yelled thanks to the band when they started to play them, and then sang along (not too loudly, of course) or clapped choruses out of mild-mannered adoration. (more…)

Looking at the six years between The Devil, You + Me, the newest release from the Notwist, and Neon Golden, the release that threw them into American ears, leaves a deceiving impression. Markus Acher and Michael Acher have been working. Not for the Notwist, exactly, but for projects that are deceptively similar to their ambient electronic pop. There was 2004’s Faking the Books from Lali Puna, Markus’ side project, 2005’s 13 & God, a Notwist collaboration with Anticon rappers Themselves, and 2006’s Notes and the Like from Ms. John Soda, Michael’s side project. But these releases increased the appetite for a new Notwist album more often than they satisfied it.

It’s with much delight, then, that The Devil, You + Me easily picks up where Neon Golden left off. Some of the melodies even sound pieced together from remainders of the album that came before it; not in a lazy, “we’ve heard this all before” fashion, but like a fragmented memory nagging you to complete it.

The Notwist don’t really break from what worked so well last time. The Devil, You + Me features the same sort of smudged, smushed, scraping electronics, at times soft and warm, at others industrial and cold. The lyrical themes are somewhat similar, as well, bouncing back and forth between isolation (”I’m alone at last / with every other me”) and endearment (”the sun was up all night / and I put my arms around you / to hold you tight / on and on and on and on”). (more…)