With bubbly one-name international acts like Annie and M.I.A. dropping killer LPs in recent months, the current female pop landscape's been enjoying the diversity of a Captain Planet episode. Which is why, when I first threw on Gustav's Rettet Die Wale after only hearing perky single "We Shall Overcome", I was expecting another foreign enchantress delivering sugary melodies in broken English over genre-bending beats. Boy, was I wrong. For one, Gustav, aka Eva Jantschitsch, is closer to a one-woman Ms. John Soda than a global pop diva, and some fiddling on Freetranslation.com reveals the album title's politically charged message, "Save the Whales", as a sign of activism to come.
However, Jantschitsch is way too intricate and arcane to simply rant about environmentalism and human rights for 40-plus minutes. Just as lush strings and woodwinds clash with synthetic IDM on the album, Jantschitsch's quirky intonation creates a perplexing dynamic between the vocals and gravely suggestive song titles. Take the title track, for example, where Jantschitsch croons the title mantra in German over strings borrowed from a Sinatra session. In addition to rescuing Shamu, we're also urged to fuck the system and get laid, a meta take on popular liberalism. Similarly, on the tragic "One Hand Mona", the portentous line "she lost her left arm and married Karl" is sung with a quiver and a smirk, as if Jantschitsch's on the verge of cracking up at her star-crossed protagonist.
The sonics on Rettet Die Wale, however, are far less veiled. The brainy Jantschitsch taps an extensive range of musical sources ranging from Eno to Björk to Civil Rights songs, grounding all of them in cut-and-dry laptop pop. She's perfectly content to disassemble a straightforward pop song and stretch its melody and chord progression over several more bars than necessary, isolating each individual constituent from the conglomerate. As a result, the slow-tempo numbers here require considerable patience; the six-plus minute "Little Weird Grrrl" doesn't burst from its rigid seems until the final 60 seconds, and a shrill organ in the Gothic "Mein Bruder" chillingly resonates for the song's duration, filling the listener with either absolute terror or ennui.
This inconspicuous backdrop pushes the vocals uncomfortably to the sonic foreground. Unlike the breathy lap-pop vocals of groups like the Notwist and Lali Puna, Jantschitsch's protrude in the mix, drawing attention to every lyric or inflective tick. "Da, Am Monopøl" and "We Shall Overcome", with their intricately proactive arrangements, are two notable exceptions, but the majority of the album leaves us to grapple with cryptic lyrics, which gloss over the tedious music beneath. Fortunately Jantschitsch's bookish, She's All That charisma is enough to maintain interest, and while you may have no clue what she's saying, you'll somehow come away more cultured in the end.
