Bernhard Eder (Wien/Berlin, Indie-Pop-Folk) in den Gärten

In the organizer's words:

indie.cologne.events, bernhard eder & die hängenden gärten von ehrenfeld present:

what: ☆ Bernhard Eder ☆ (Vienna/Berlin, indie-pop-folk)
presents his album "Golden Days"
"Timeless pop art" (Falter)
"The songwriter pop of the hour comes from Austria"
(Rolling Stone)
► https://youtu.be/MyuqbND4wbI?si=4L42qXzctpOrJJPu
► https://youtu.be/2qxeB3EfuCI?si=uW3MQAT-EcGfzZd0
► thttp://www.bernhardeder.net
& special guest
when: Mon.17.2.25
where: the hanging gardens of Ehrenfeld
Admission 19:00, start 20:00

Event ► https://www.facebook.com/event

Bernhard Eder - Golden Days
RELEASE: 2.2.2024 - TRON RECORDS / HOANZL (AT) / BROKEN SILENCE (DE)
In a garishly colorful and loud world that increasingly consists of gimmickry and simplified categorization, it is the quiet and subdued nuances that should be paid attention to first and foremost. The Viennese thoroughbred musician Bernhard Eder has always understood his art to be one that is considered, reflective, makes hooks and cannot be hastily categorized either in terms of content or music. He likes to quote from the songbook of the great indie heroes, but always adds his own colors to this gesture, which makes him stand out pleasantly from the bulge of musical releases from the competition. The latest work of art, "Golden Days", is another prime example of patience and balance. The artist has spent no less than five years
and tweaked it until all the cogwheels meshed and the individual nuances could be combined into a compressed sound package.
His own perfectionism and the rapidly changing social trends meant that Eder was constantly adapting and refining. A new melody here, a different lyric there. The arrangements were in a state of flux, the thoughts were in rotation. The final result is an almost hour-long journey through the micro- and macrocosm of Eder's world. Similar to his great idols, the Beatles, the Viennese and his expert band (Marlene Lacherstorfer, Julian Schneeberger, Ryan T. Carpenter, Max Perner) recorded the majority of the songs in a single room. In Studio 2 of the Radiokulturhaus Wien, songs were created that meander between bittersweet fragility and exhilarating self-confidence, proudly expressing the community spirit of the individual musicians. Half of the songs go over the five-minute mark and take enough time to build up tension and emotion instead of submitting to the dictates of dwindling global attention spans.
Already in the opener "Touropa", equipped with a driving drum beat, Eder soars to unexpected falsetto heights and counteracts the heavy content of a continent that can no longer free itself from the brackets of its many crises with his fine timbre. In the last third, the song suddenly takes a psychedelic turn and anticipates what Eder often allows himself on "Golden Days" - the element of surprise. For example, in the track "In Greece", which is thematically driven by the refugee crisis, he inserts a break in the middle to turn the initially summery sound in a dark, dystopian direction. The Beatles-style "The Unbeauty Regime" also criticizes dictators, fake news media and world destroyers, initially with dreamy sound cascades including a choir interlude, but transforms into a dark indie anti-right-wing waltz towards the end, caricaturing the absurdity of current world politics with circus-like sounds. As with "Along Alone", a guitar-heavy ode to isolation and loneliness, Eder tweaked the lyrics several times until he knew how to categorize his thoughts correctly.
"The golden days they have been gone / the golden days they have been sung" is the title track, which increasingly picks up speed and twists and turns. Eder propagates standing up, not letting yourself down and not giving up on making a difference in this world. It is one of the few truly optimistic moments on this gloomy album. The artwork by Hamburg artist Tanja Roschat perfectly reflects the bleak facets of the global present. "Glorious Land" starts with a gentle acoustic guitar and a voice as bright as a bell, denounces the pushbacks at the borders of Hungary and Serbia and ends in a deliberately unwieldy manner. Until Eder pulls his not-so-secret masterpiece out of the quiver at the end. "Nowayout" is a parable about depression and loneliness that has become a song. Seven minutes full of ghostly atmosphere, scratchy softness and a dissonant crescendo at the end. No, not everything will be fine. But it is good to have a cuddly, honest companion for the darkness of life with "Golden Days".
(Robert Fröwein)