Early Taste of the Upcoming Einsam Album Is An Invitation To ‘Fill Your Boots’ With Life – and With Sound

The ode to life in music is a little tradition of its own: it resurfaces, at some point, in the work of all the greats, from David Bowie to Leonard Cohen – just to name two. Music, an art form with the potential to be particularly liberating both for its creator and its listener, is a perfect vehicle for an invitation to get drunk on life, to confront it with all its beauty and also with all its struggles, to discover the necessary abandon which is required to live life fully. 

It is not surprising to find this theme surfacing in the newest work by Einsam, an artist who started sharing the first fruits of his solo project in the tricky years of the COVID pandemic, when the possibility of seizing the moment and living life in its fullest seemed, if not lost forever, at least rather far removed. 

It is also a declaration of intents of sort, given the fact that it is our first look – or rather, our first listen – at an upcoming long-player coming after a silent spell. This new single is not only a sample of how Einsam’s sound has grown, becoming more complex and rather evidently more ambitious; it is perhaps a key to a correct reading of this artist’s attitude towards his own art – music as a way of living more fully.

There is a subtly intellectual spin to most things Einsam has been doing, a sense that this solo project is for him a way of indulging the cheekily cerebral side of his art. The German word Einsam, after all, means ‘oneself’ – rather apt for a solo venture – but it could also be translated, quite literally, to ‘one Sam’, providing a definition of the artist himself. The upcoming album, which is to be titled ‘Actionism’, shares a name with a controversial art movement, born of the 60s in Vienna, which delighted in the shocking and the transgressive – a more visceral take on the joy of living. And the title of this new single, ‘Fill Your Boots (More Life)’, is drawn from an idiom which is an invitation to take as much as one desires: most typically, at a banquet or a potluck dinner, and the food metaphor is perhaps not entirely at odds with the contents of this track, which is at its bottom an invitation to the listener (and a reminder for the artist himself) to gorge oneself on life as much as possible, perhaps in the awareness that in the human condition full satisfaction is never achievable.

Musically, the track is an expression of the latest incarnation of synth-rock, a genre that felt for a while like it was going to be relegated to the 80s and has then exploded onto the scene in a series of completely new forms in recent years. Little touches of the synth-rock of yore are all over it, with elements which are reminiscent of Depeche Mode, Devo, and the later Bowie himself, among others. There is even a slight vein of something that sounds a little like a Krautrock influence, especially in the way the vocals are treated, layered and distorted to the point of coming across almost metallic. It is a more complex song than Einsam has offered before, with an uninterrupted flow in the rhythm section smoothly incorporating the little transitions that are necessary for the song to grow like a mounting wave. There is a ripple of guitar surfacing at regular intervals throughout what is otherwise a synth-heavy track, with the lyric “Give me more life” echoing out of the background harmonisation like a demand and a declaration alike. It is a danceable track and one that demands to be played loud, best if in a crowded club: an invitation to the kind of abandon the title suggests.

It is a track both powerful and enticing, which will delight anyone who has a love of synth-rock and perhaps catch the curiosity of those who are only flirting with the genre at present. Clever without ever being obnoxious, sincere to the point of feeling in places a little dangerous, ‘Fill Your Boots (More Life)’ is first and foremost a song that demands to be played repeatedly to be understood fully – another apt incarnation of its title and message.

Chiara Strazzulla

@cstrazzull

Image: ‘Fill Your Boots (More Life)’ Official Single Cover