Photo by Erik Weiss
When you have a famous face some things get easier, others get harder. Especially when you’re trying out new things, aside from the ones that made you famous. So, although many of NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION’s international readership might not be familiar with Klaas Heufer-Umlauf let us tell you that he’s one of Germany’s most popular young TV hosts. Together with Mark Tavassol – also part of famous German band WIR SIND HELDEN – the two friends now form a band called GLORIA. And with their famous names they can be sure to get way more attention for it than other newcomers.
And while WIR SIND HELDEN tend to make joyful pop songs and Klaas is famous for mixing slapstick with show hosting their recently released debut album Gloria is a surprise in every way. A pleasantly surprised record full of melancholic anthems to love, loss and the struggle of daily urban life. Something unexpected and something that might also work if German is not your mother language. We find this highly interesting and took the chance to ask GLORIA a few questions about language, lyrics and the power of reduction.
Okay, so you’re writing and singing in German which might make it hard for a lot of our readers to follow your songs. What’s more important for you? The language aka the lyrics or the actual music?
Klaas: You tend to figure this out pretty early in the songwriting process, I think. In our case I would actually say the lyrics are a bit more important. On the other side it doesn’t work if the rest don’t follows. And you might even get this when you don’t fully understand the lyrics but maybe get the intention.
Mark: It’s a bit like the question ‘What is more important – heart or lung?’ One can’t work without the other, so it’s difficult to answer. Best case – one can’t exist without the other. But still people tend to give the words less importance. Especially we Germans aren’t very strict on English words, for example.
And on the other side I know plenty of people who say that the general mood of a song is more important than the lyrical content.
K: It’s not about knowing all the vocabulary. It’s about putting words at the exact right spot within the song. The right word can bring a total different atmosphere. It’s all about a certain rhetorical culture. In the language you’re familiar with you’ll find your own style and value system. From precise to awkward, up to silly and ridiculous. If you know what I mean. It’s about cultural details I can’t analyze in another language.
But you never had the thought of writing in English?
Both: No, never.
I find this kind of interesting. See, I did a little experiment in which I gave a few of your songs to our author Kayleigh. She’s American and she doesn’t speak German so I thought it would be cool to have her opinion on your songs.
M: Now, that’s cool.
K: Really, no German? Interesting.
Okay, so about your song “Warten (= Waiting)” she says it’s both – “reflective and angry”.
K: Don’t go with the “angry”-part but with the “reflective” one.
About “Eigenes Berlin (= Own Berlin)” she says: “I pictured someone strutting down a street, feeling very full of energy and life”
M: Hmm, tough.
K: Not the exact mood but she got that “strutting down a street”-thing quite well.
But I really like her thoughts on “Die Zeit Ist Um (= Time Is Up)”. She said: “I feel like the lyrics are talking about a silly mistake we all make. Like someone shrugging with a smile on their face saying, “What can you do?” And I think that sums it up pretty well, wouldn’t you agree?
M: Indeed, it does.
K: That’s almost too spooky in its precise interpretation. (laughs)
I think one aspect that helps your album is the way of how reduced it musically sounds. A lot of bands tend to drift into a certain amount of pathos.
K: There have been a lot of lofty moments during the recording process which we filtered out. I remember a few C-parts of songs that got lost along the way. (laughs)
M: It was all about reducing.
K: But on the other side melancholia wasn’t a specific goal we tried to achieve.
That’s kind of hard to believe.
K: But it’s true. If you sit down and say “I’m about to write a sad record now”, then mostly it gets sadder as originally planned. And maybe a bit too over-ambitious in this case. That wasn’t our plan. We just choose thoughts and subjects that seemed interesting for us. We looked at them in every possible way. And when you get to the lyrical and emotional core of a song it’s kind of hard to do this without any form of melancholia.
But not everybody seems to be willing to go this way.
M: I mean, you can’t reinvent the wheel. That’s one problem of it. A lot of people tend to work with phrases when it comes to writing down lyrics. And they don’t even come to the idea that it might be good to change the phrase and give it a new aspect or a different approach. I find myself listening to a lot of German bands when I think: “I could pause the sentence now and would exactly know how the rest of it will sound” I mean, these things also happen a lot in English but it’s always something different with your native language.
In your first music videos it wasn’t about your – in Germany quite popular – faces. Instead you told stories. Was that important for you? Letting the music do the talking?
M: Yes, it was.
K: New bands normally need these videos to get their faces known to a broader audience. There was no necessity in doing this for us. So, the decision was quite easily done for us. On one hand it was about giving the music the room on the other one the ideas for the video clips were just too strong. It wouldn’t have worked with us.
M: We actually filmed a cameo for one of the videos. But quite early afterwards we recognized that it just didn’t work out.
You just started touring with the record. What are the plans for the future?
K: Well, the record is just out there and we’ll see how it goes. Both of us also have a certain lust for a new writing phase which will hopefully come soon. Maybe not entire five weeks but whenever we find time for it. That’s how we’ve done it before. But it all depends a bit on how the album will do.
M: I’m currently sensing one thing. We’ve started touring a bit too early after the release of the record. You can do this, but it’s also quite risky. And during the course of the tour and the speaking about it there comes a certain momentum we currently experience. The venues get fuller and the feedback gets better.
Final question since we are about hope and passion. What do these two elements mean to you?
K: Sounds a bit like an outdoor company. (laughs) You know the ones that produce cagoules with stupid phrases and English words like “Challenger” or “Explore The World.”
M: To answer it seriously. We are optimists and the music gives us energy. There are days when I wake up and I’m quite excited about what comes next. And when you take this purpose in life and the excitement away I’m really in a bad mood.
K: I agree. Seeing it in biochemical way I’m pretty much okay. I’m happy to have received a good, let’s call it, cocktail from Mother Nature. So, normally I’m a positive thinking person.
An extended version of this interview in German will be featured in the upcoming issue of the Magazine “Das Wetter.” Find more information on this right here.
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