Wir Sind Helden
In my constant search to hear "something I haven’t heard before", which has led me into listening to a lot of music in languages I don’t understand, one of my recent faves has been German indie-pop band Wir Sind Helden (We Are Heroes). I discovered them in an odd way; I was listening to an experimental digital shortwave station from Erlangen, Germany a couple of years ago. The station is intended for local coverage, so they use low power and aren’t easy to hear here in the U.S., but I got lucky one day and heard them for about five minutes with lots of dropouts, not exactly an easy listening experience or anything, but enough to understand what was going on. One of the songs that was playing intrigued me, so I wrote the station asking what it was. They replied that it was Wir Sind Helden’s "Denkmal". So off I went to my favorite online German record shop with an English language interface and bought their first album, Die Reklamation, and some singles. Insanely catchy stuff; I particularly liked their song "Guten Tag". Some time later I also ordered their second album, Von Hier an Blind, which perhaps wasn’t as easy to get into, but one that I found I enjoyed just as much.
I was wandering around YouTube Saturday morning searching for bands I like who might have videos posted there (and finding a lot of them) when I stumbled across a Japanese language video of the title track from that second album. Japanese? Turns out they’ve recorded that song in Japanese, French, and English now, seemingly just as a goof. The video is a charming animated piece that works equally well in all the languages. You can see all of them on the MTV Deutschland web site.
I was also pleased to find that the band’s web site has been translated into English! Lots of great stuff up there, including all their videos (except for the polyglot videos on the MTV site). I think my favorite (today at least) is the video for "Nur ein Vort", which is probably the coolest, cleverest rip off of the famous Bob Dylan flipping cards thing I’ve ever seen. It’s subtle, but watch it once or twice and it becomes clear the amazing amount of thought and planning that went into the execution. Also check out the video for "Müssen nur Wollen" from the first album; I love that one.
And it appears I’m not their only English-speaking fan. One fan in the U.K. has set up a fan site for them in English, including an interview with singer/guitarist/lyricist Judith Holofernes. Sven-S Porst of Earthlingsoft is kind of a fan (maybe as a guilty pleasure?); he hosts a page on his blog containing translations of all their lyrics into English by one of his readers. I had heard that Holofernes’ lyrics were quite clever, and now I see that that’s true; the translations on the page have notes explaining some of the wordplay that doesn’t translate well. And there are a couple of interesting audio interviews with the band in English, one as they appeared to make an early foray out of Germany into Holland (they’ve since played the U.K. as well), hosted by Dutch music site Toazted. Interesting stuff.
Tags: music wir sind helden German
Posted at 2:37 AM
Yes I agree, "Wir sind Helden" is a very popular indy band. Their songs are very fresh sounding. The lyrics are as fantastic as the quality of the albums. You have a good music taste.
Posted by Maria loves pictures at 4:05 PM, May 31, 2006 [Link]