Peter Fox sings on his current single “Ein Auge blau” in the refrain: “I’m not broken, just a little bit broken”. His Neukölln colleague Marlène Colle, who has just released her first album “Schade busted” (Listenrecords) under the project name Paula Paula, is already past this stage.
“Life is a broken device that we try to fix,” is the first line of the song “Kaputtes Geräte”, in which she sings about permanent failure to a cheerfully strumming electric guitar and rapping drums.
Marlène Colle belongs to the mask theater group Theater fragil and has been releasing songs under her first name for a while. For the Paula Paula album, the 41-year-old has teamed up with colleagues such as Kristina Koropecki, Gisbert zu Knyphausen and Joda Förster.
In the nine songs, the band spans a sound spectrum ranging from indie rock to folk to art pop, which makes the mostly German, but also French and English lyrics shine in the finest way. For example, the quarreling Zoom Date description “Digital Eyes” is transformed from a reduced piano plus drum machine thud into a hymn elevated by organ, cello, bass and drums – including a happy ending.
The mood of Charlotte Brandi’s song “Frau” is reminiscent of the self-encouragement euphoria of the piece “Übersicht”, in which Marlène Colle sings about the fact that you sometimes have to overlook the worried looks of others in order to get ahead. Instead, she advises: “Wings up and nose in the wind/ Life catches you”. Exactly this spirit of simplicity flows through the whole album and is wonderfully contagious.
