Perhaps it is an ever decreasing circles kind of thing but I am sometimes driven to wonder why today often seems like a replay of yesterday. The cause of my philosophical concern? “Sensitiv” by Berlin based multi-instrumentalist Timbeau.
In ten songs, Timbeau has managed to successfully and reverentially excise the sounds of eighties European synth pop and reinvent – again most reverentially – them for today. Truth be told, you never could go far wrong with combining the German language, those analogue synth sounds and the occasional guitar solo and songs like “Jammertal” or “In Der Stadt” would duly make chart grade if today were actually yesterday. Style is what style is though and fans of the genre certainly won’t find much to complain about in this album.
Being inherently contrary, the best songs to my ears were not the synth pop recreations but the Papooz like “Brut” and the almost acoustic “Melatonin”. My German-English dictionary – it seemed only appropriate to go old school for translation services – also indicated that Timbeau has the ability to put some substance into his lyrics so, all in all, “Sensitiv” is an album that is worth a listen especially if your musical tastes extend to synthpop.