Get Well Soon - Listen EP

(Muso's Guide, December 9, 2008)

Single Review

Another day in December, another Christmas release. This time from German singer, songwriter and instrumentalist Konstantin Gropper, aka Get Well Soon. What Christmas songs are made of is anyone’s guess. Will it mention the word ‘Christmas’? Ideally. Should it be packed with comfort and joy? Not necessarily. What about the baby Jesus, should he be in there? You’re not in church now, mate. Get Well Soon do a sterling job of representing the secular side of Christmas, starting with opener ‘Listen! Those Lost At Sea Sing A Song On Christmas Day’. Bringing out the big Radiohead guns, all elegiac lyrics and full of aching wonder, this track easily forges the link between intelligent rock and - bizarrely - festive music. The lyric is beseeching, a crew on the verge of madness - “just believe they’re after us” - giving a sense of disturbed minds, and a removal from reality thanks to the shipwreck. Ho ho ho.

Second track ‘Christmas in Adventure Parks’ is festivity-laden from the off, complete with Christmas bells and a smattering of Tindersticks, Phantom Planet and Muse - and all the festive fun that entails. But the guitar work is truly enjoyable, and there’s a great tune lingering subtly behind the layers.

On ‘It’s A Race For Our New Home’, there is a foreboding which has been hinted at elsewhere on the EP. Gropper’s vocal reflects mourning, whilst the lyrical matter has taken an evermore darker turn in the nominal ‘race’ - “The first one to own is the first one to kill”. The music takes the form of a dirge, layered with vocals. Told almost like a cautionary folk tale, it strikes a chill into the festive heart. But if that is dark, it’s nothing compared to EP closer ‘We Are Cannibal Corpse’. Beginning with a percussive skeleton scale, this is the most Muse of all the tracks on display here. The choral implications of the start give way to Get Well Soon’s take on ‘Space Dementia’, sharing tempo and drum sounds with that Muse track from 2003’s Origin of Symmetry. Gropper tries something quite special with the backing vocals which makes it just that little bit different, but overall, it’s not an altogether new sound.

As far as festive records go, this is about as seasonal as Christmas Hits From Norman Bates’ Personal Collection but it is beautiful and strange and Get Well Soon are obviously something very special indeed. Cannibal corpses and lost shipwrecked souls - so that’s what Christmas songs are made of.