Coryphe

Ya thought I’d forgotten about you, ey? Well, like the Pet Shop Boys put it: You were always on my mind. So, here we go:

Now, I don’t want to be a bummer here, but this whole Easter thing is a bit of a gloomy ordeal, right? Not the chocolate eggs and bunnies, but the “celebrations” around the crucifixion and resurrection and all that. Actually, how did we get from one to the other?

It’s funny how sometimes these seemingly very disparate things end up stuck together. I guess that juxtaposition can increase the experience of disparate things?

Like, I grew up in Hamburg, as some of you may be familiar with. And it’s a nice city and all – do pay it a visit, if you get the chance – but a thing people tend not to know is that Hamburg is home to the world’s largest (and dare I say most gorgeous) park/garden cemetery. Granted, it’s not the typical “got to go” destination for a trip to Hamburg, but that does not take away from it being a truly serene place to visit. Apart from there naturally being a ton of graves, from memorials for those fallen in wars to private last resting places, it also has lakes and hills and walking trails through extensive forests.

I grew up being taken to my family’s grave, where an eye is kept on multiple generations by a large bronze angel, by my grandfather, to rake the leaves and take care of the flowers, and pay our respects.
It’s this personal split between long, blissful walks in this gorgeous nature and pensive visits to our family grave, that I am reminded of, when I think of my tie-in from today’s album to the cemetery overall.

The year’s 2010, and a 17-year-old me is introduced to today’s band by one of his close friends, Lennart. He’s what society might describe as the Hipster in the friend group and brings back all kinds of exciting music from his travels to London, where he visits family. Electro-Pop acts with long, confusing names like Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs or Two Door Cinema Club. Bands that take pop sensibilities and pair them with drum machines and “drops”. The song “Undercover Martyn” first made its way to my ears and packed enough punch to deeply sear itself into my brain.

We listened to the single releases on repeat, until later in the year the band’s debut album “Tourist History” was released and took our excitement to the next level.

It was the last year of high school, and so the music soundtracked all kinds of significant events, from graduation trips to house parties, to what I guess might have been my first stand-alone concert without parental supervision – just us at a venue on Hamburg’s infamous Reeperbahn.
One such memory that is distinctly impressed on me takes place in what must have been late summer or spring. Three or four of us crammed into some dingy car, taking a shortcut across the cemetery, blasting the album and having what we might nostalgically call “the time of our lives”.Not a worry in the world, yet surely drenched in pubescent angst. Racing through luscious sun-lit parks, with literal history buried between the trees.
Contrasts, am I right?

Anyway, not sure there is a point to be made here, but it’s a great album. Something to give you that rush you may feel as spring first takes proper hold of the world and you are itching to dance through sunny-evening streets. 
Enjoy your Sunday roast – be sure to “Eat That Up, It’s Good For You”!

Happy Easter 🐰