Music of love from an awkward soul

Backstage at the Knitting Factory, the Notwist’s Markus Acher looks like an indie rocker, professorial division. The German singer wears oval glasses and rumpled casual clothes. His curly hair is as uncontainable as a puff of smoke. The professorial air extends to his curiosity about his favored subject, music.

“We were living in this small town, very conservative and very boring,” he explains, before outlining a familiar punk-rock creation myth. “We were listening to all these hard-core bands, mainly from the United States: Husker Du, Moving Targets, Minor Threat, Jerry’s Kids. I don’t know all their names, really, but it was totally our music. It was something that really expressed all we wanted to say our whole lives, so it was very important to us to make something like that, something really intense.”

The Notwist formed in 1989 in the small town of Weilheim, Germany, a short drive from Munich. It was a pounding hard-core punk group that followed in the way of its influences. The charming imprecision of the U.S. independent scene was lost in translation, however, and the group’s first two records could practically pass as prototypes for nu-metal -- glossier than punk, and filled with more anger than ennui.

The band’s next two, “12” and “Shrink,” now out of print in the U.S., were still full of thick, distorted guitars, but there was development. The members added a sense of deliberate pacing to their songs, as well as electronic percussion and jazz changes and textures, most notably massed reed instruments and the occasional vibraphone.

The result was cited as yet another iteration of post-rock -- an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink genre with roots in Chicago and adherents around the world. Like their peers’, the music was texturally rich, but listening to it could be as tedious as staring at finely patterned wallpaper.

In 2002, their sixth full-length album, “Neon Golden,” was issued in Europe and reached the Top 10 charts in Germany. Its success in America was far from assured -- the band’s U.S. label, Zero Hour, had gone out of business in 1999.

Most unexpectedly, though, the record became that rare thing: an underground, zeitgeist hit. Even before critics noticed it, “Neon Golden” began selling by the thousands as a pricey import.

In late February, the album received a domestic release on Domino Records, and this spring, the band completed its first American tour in five years with two sold-out shows at the Knitting Factory, a far cry from earlier, sparsely attended efforts to tour this country. They have become unassuming stars among a certain sect of underground music fan.

How did a loud yet pedestrian band become understated yet grand? What is it about “Neon Golden” that sounds so fresh? Is it how they buck the garage rock trend? Is it that the band’s sound has finally gelled?

“We became more diverse,” Acher explains. “We started to discover music like experimental noise improvisations by Fred Frith, heavy metal stuff like Slayer, and free jazz, all of which has the same energy or intensity as hard-core. And it went on.”

“Neon Golden” was crafted in Weilheim’s Uphon studio over 15 months. But for a certain restlessness and a willingness to explore new sounds, all traces of the band’s hard-core roots are gone. The grinding has evolved into a clear and confident internationalist pop.

English, language of pop

What stands out is their ability to find a delicate balance between analog and digital. Pop hooks dissolve into long, dub passages. Spare electronic beats dance amid pizzicato strings. Diced and chopped samples click alongside rolling banjos. Clever sample arrays bring to mind disembodied balloon pops. Tea-kettle synths compete with teams of tea-kettle saxophones.

From the beginning, Acher’s English-language vocals cut through the noise, but they have evolved. A pleasant variation on the rock monotone -- imagine if Lou Reed were from Bavaria, not Long Island -- his voice can pass for spoken word in places, but more often the cold/tender tenor simultaneously evokes both gentle melodicism and the distant emotional freeze-out of German peers such as Kraftwerk.

“The language of pop music is English,” Acher says. “German is very hard to sing, especially for me. I tried, but it doesn’t sound very musical. Singing in English is also more of an abstraction.

“I like that it’s not my language. It’s not about information. You have to find the story and describe something that you want to express. It’s about pictures. You know, the whole idea of making a poem and transforming it into something else. I think that’s something the Notwist is all about, about making mistakes and living with it, and trying to make the best out of it.”

Acher’s cogence aside, it’s questionable that his English has improved. On “Neon Golden,” there is something charmingly wobbly and prim about the way his lyrics present romantic distance, dissolution and isolation. “You know this place, you know this gloom?/We’ve been here before,” he sings on “Pick up the Phone.” There is emotion there, but there is also detachment.

Note how carefully he avoids the first person. There’s no “I love you, I miss you, I am feeling this feeling.” The songs are written in the second person or the royal we, highly atypical of the enforced intimacy of most love songs. Only at the end of “Pick up the Phone” does Acher admit the singer isn’t just a narrator but a participant in the story. “Pick up the phone and answer me at last,” he sings. “Today I will step out of your past.”

Poignancy and pathos

The Notwist’s work is wanting and modern, love songs for the cubicle generation. Acher says in “Solitaire”:

We’re more than overwhelmed by hundreds of hugs and a million good words

We are satisfied from Monday til Friday and on Sunday we cryWe are overcute

We will never manage to be rude only twice

But we like it from that point of view.

The p.o.v. is interesting. Imagine your office’s computer technician telling weepy stories about his love life, and you will get an idea of the poignancy on display here, but also the pathos, the oddness of such sentiment being delivered in such an awkward voice, over such confident, technologically sound music.

Music, of course, is about more than lyrics, but in an era of nu-metal, garage rock, emo punk and drunkenly ribald hip-hop, articulation has been lost amid the good times and weepy confessionals.

An eloquent band like the Notwist has something special to say, just by saying it clearly.