What do you do when all styles and genres have been played and all musical avant-gardes have been explored and exhausted? Quite simply: you don't believe in this narrative.

At least that's what the Leipzig quartet Crutches have decided to do. On their debut "Four Lttr Wrds", they present "elevator punk" in a total of eleven song miniatures - of course in the knowledge that this - well - strange subgenre is about as coherent as "coffee house metal". But the band is not interested in stylistic coherence, on the contrary: instead, the absurdities of everyday life are taken to extremes in a symbolic way. Staccato metal blast beats from drummer Valentin Schuster meet pop melodies from keyboardist Olga Reznichenko meet jazz rhythms from guitarist Jan Frisch meet drone soundscapes from monochordist Laure Boer. 

With pieces such as "Wimp", "Core" or "Claw", the formation also answers the perfectly justified question of how purely instrumental music can convey humor: Namely, by not avoiding musical clichés, but deliberately forcing them and ultimately allowing them to collide. The fact that the whole thing is performed with an almost effervescent joy of playing is almost a side note.

Luca Glenzer