Unashamedly I selected the sole English language track, ‘Buzzwords’, from (Christian) Juncker’s ninth studio album, ‘Fremmed for det meste’, (‘Foreign for the most part’), which was released on the world on 12th September.
Lazing on a Sunday afternoon to paraphrase The Kinks is my thing and foreign translations have to take a back seat.
A quick listen to tracks on either side of it tells me Juncker can rock but my attraction was specifically to this one for the very English arrangement. How many times in the early 1960s (as a babe in arms of course) did I hear that same opening guitar motif that I hear now, from the likes of Herman’s Hermits, The Hollies, Gerry & the Pacemakers, The Searchers or even The Beatles?
The other thing he does very well, as he drifts into a more industrial delivery, is the long distance megaphone approach to spoken lyrics, which sounds like he’s in a field somewhere making a political speech, far from where you are so he’s just on the edge of your consciousness. It’s the sort of thing Arcade Fire always did well, which puts him in very good company.
‘Fremmed for det meste’ is being billed as his most experimental album to date, about being in the middle of life and finding yourself increasingly alienated from the world.
I guess that’s what the hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in London yesterday feel, too. That they no longer recognise the world they are living in and if they can’t stop it to get off then at least explain to them what it all means.
He’s an ‘outsider’ looking in, in the sense of Camus’ character, the hero/antihero Meursault, I guess.
Meursault recognised only the absurdity of it all and let the world just pass him by, but Juncker at least invites you to come inside and join him in his own material world, however screwed up that might be.
“I simply can’t keep up”, he says. “I don’t understand the massive use of auto tune, all the wars and TikTok, or why you need a Twix on top of your donut. “
Billy Joel, eat your heart out. Here’s another victim that didn’t start the fire.
“My new songs stem from the feeling of tension between me and the world, my past and present,” he adds.
And how do you think I cope, Christian? I haven’t had a mobile phone since 1998. When it was a phone, period. I do believe I hold the World Record.
His particular gripe here is with those pesky ‘Buzzwords’, illuminating a linguistic void where loanwords and prestige jargon obscure and reveal reality.
I wonder if he knows how prescient that observation is to someone who ploughs a lonely furrow trying to avoid being sucked into that exact same cesspit in this reviewing business, surrounded by tripe about “the cascading arpeggios indicating how they are going to be a band to watch in the future” or similar.
“Buzzword Bingo/Bullshit a gogo” as he sings.
He has just turned 50. A dangerous age at which you begin to disappear socially. As Alexei Sayle pointed out in Barcelona Plates men stop looking at you because all middle aged men look alike, while women stop because they don’t want to fuck you any longer.
But it’s also an age when experience tells in the ability to recount a song because you’ve probably lived it anyway.
And you know all the buzzwords.
From 24 September to 24 October he is touring widely across Denmark. See social pages for details.
Find him on:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/christian.juncker.1/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrjuncker/?hl=en-gb
