Kategoria: Trupa Trupa

„Trupa Trupa Convert Historical Trauma into Post-Punk Catharsis on Of The Sun.

The Polish punk outfit returns with a grim Holocaust-inspired fifth album.

Rock songs about the Holocaust tend to center around graphic depictions of Jewish death and suffering, the favored artistic means through which to capture the magnitude of horror. Here, for instance, is Captain Beefheart snarling his way through “Dachau Blues”: “Danced and screaming and dying in the ovens / Cough and smoke and dying by the dozens.” Or consider Manic Street Preachers’ “The Intense Humming of Evil,” with its unsparing visions of malaria, misery, and “six million screaming souls.”

„Gdansk band Trupa Trupa continue to push the envelope on Of the Sun.

Of the Sun is Gdansk band Trupa Trupa’s third album to be widely released outside of Poland, following Headache in 2015 and Jolly New Songs in 2017. Each successive record has swapped a shade of intriguing idiosyncrasy for a sharpening of hook and method, and the resulting payoff is still on the increase.

„Trupa Trupa’s Of The Sun takes apparently simple songs and brutally smashes them up.

Listening to the apparently simple songs of Trupa Trupa often reminds me of reading a nineteenth-century novel; a gripping slog with beautiful, luminous moments that stay with you long after you’ve stopped listening. In this exercise the band act as both narrators and composers of a quest that never seems to have a satisfactory ending. From the off, with the single ‘Dream About’, they drop you headfirst into their strange world of half-thought fancies and uneasy confabulations. The feeling they are showing you some terrible magic lantern show is never far away.

„Celnego komentarza bieżącej codzienności w polskich piosenkach szukać raczej ze świecą. Dominuje wyegzaltowany pop albo introwertyczne opowieści, jakby zbyt wiele się dookoła nie działo. Inna kwestia czy forma piosenki – tak mocno zakorzeniona w muzyce rozrywkowej – przystają do sytuacji społecznej i politycznej. Ale czemu nie? Jest przecież wiele świetnych przykładów w kraju i za granicą, chociaż w recenzjach częściej niż słowom, uwagę poświęca się muzyce; tekst jest raczej na drugim planie. Albo po prostu za mało zaznacza swoją obecność.

„Polonais déjà crédibles à l’occasion de leurs précédents albums (Headache puis Jolly new songs), dans une veine indé bien tenue, Trupa Trupa nous fait le bonheur d’un nouvel essai, qu’il appellera Of the sun. A la fois tendu (Remainder, excellent, aux airs de Sonic Youth/Pavement) et nuancé avec panache, l’album rend une copie irréprochable. Les hommes de Gdansk y démarrent de façon saccadée; la batterie impulse, rejointe par la basse, un groove qui ne nous quitte pas (Dream about, plutôt rêveur, en ouverture). D’encarts psyché animés en salves plus appuyées, le combo de Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, Tomek Pawluczuk, Wojtek Juchniewicz et Rafal Wojczal justifie sa signature chez Glitterbeat, dédié aux courants audacieux. Il “pervertit” ses trames douces, met aussi une forme de douceur dans ses plans sauvages. Ses motifs, tels ceux qui jonchent le titre d’ouverture, font mouche.

„I polacchi Trupa Trupa sono bravi musicisti ma anche ottimi manager di sé stessi perché, partendo da Danzica, sono arrivati ad una delle più intriganti label in circolazione quale la Glitterbeat dopo quattro album, i primi due dei quali autoprodotti. Nel corso del tempo poi hanno suonato in vari e prestigiosi festival internazionali tra cui il Primavera Sound di Barcellona e il SXSW di Austin facendo apprezzare a vaste platee il loro sound ricco di umori new wave e vagamente post rock dove è ben presente una bella vena melodica assieme a frammenti più graffianti. La proposta della formazione è priva di fronzoli poiché concede ampio spazio ad una sezione ritmica secca e precisa e alle chitarre dagli essenziali riff mentre il cantato è quasi una litania molto efficace nella sua linearità. Maturo.”

Gianluca Polverari, www.rockerilla.com

„Trupa Trupa beams are gonna blind me. Well, if the beams in question are coming Of The Sun I suppose you’d expect nothing less. This Polish quartet serve up big, reverb-drenched post-punk on their latest LP. The cavernous sound of tracks like ‘Remainder’ is somewhere on the sliding scale between mid-period Deerhunter and Protomartyr at their most bullish. Somewhere in the crowd there’s you.”

www.normanrecords.com

„The second Glitterbeat release to feature in my roundup up this month, the counterbalanced Polish band Trupa Trupa couldn’t be further apart, sound wise, from the more languid looseness dub of their label mates Baba ZuLa.